Design Engineer

Design Engineer Career Renew is recruiting for one of its clients a Design Engineer. This is a hybrid role based in San Francisco, with a salary range of $200-250K USD annually, plus benefits and equity. We are a proactive assistant for client-facing professionals. In just a few clicks, it connects with a user's email, calendar, meeting notes, CRM, and Slack to proactively automate repetitive workflows, such as auto-drafting email responses, updating the CRM with custom fields, and spinning up an internal deal room on Slack. Think of what Claude Code has done for software engineers — we are building that for client-facing professionals. The Role We are evolving from a single-channel email product into a proactive AI assistant that operates across a user's full set of tools. This role sits at the center of that transition. The Design Engineer will own the end-to-end user experience of how a person works alongside AI agents, including how tasks are surfaced, prioritized, delegated, and reviewed. This is a zero-to-one remit. There is no inherited design system to maintain or existing interface to iterate on. The person in this role will define the interaction patterns, visual language, and information architecture of a product category that does not yet have established conventions. Day-to-Day Responsibilities Own the full design and front-end build of core product surfaces, from initial concept through to shipped code. Define interaction models for human-agent collaboration: task handoff, progress visibility, agent output review, and prioritization. Produce Figma designs and translate them directly into production React components, working within an Electron-based Mac application. Work closely with the founding team to shape product direction through the work itself, not through a handoff process. Establish and maintain a design standard that scales as the team grows. Move quickly through iteration cycles: prototyping, testing, and shipping in short loops. Scope and Ownership The Design Engineer will be the sole design function at the company. They will have complete ownership over the product's visual and interaction quality, working directly with the founders rather than within a layered design organization. This requires both the ability to operate independently and the judgment to know when to push back, when to simplify, and when to move. The most pressing near-term work is defining how users navigate and act across an agent-driven workspace — a problem that sits at the intersection of task management, ambient intelligence, and workflow design. This is the kind of problem that requires genuine product thinking, not only execution. Requirements 2 - 6 years of experience as a designer who can code or a frontend engineer with a strong design sense (Mandatory). Demonstrated track record as a design engineer (strong coder) or frontend engineer with immaculate design sense at a product-led growth company (Mandatory). Experience at a well-designed productivity start-up (e.g., Superhuman, Notion, Airtable, Slack, Figma, Grammarly, Granola) (Nice-to-have). Design school background (e.g., RISD, SCAD, Emily Carr) or CS degree (Nice-to-have). Ability to ship front-end code (not just "vibe code") and proficiency in Figma/React (Mandatory). Pragmatic and business-minded (not a pure artist) with a strong bias to action (Mandatory). Background or demonstrated interest in productivity and workflow automation (e.g., thinking about how users present, prioritize, and collaborate with tasks and agents) (Mandatory). Why You Should Join Us A Genuinely Unsolved Design Problem: We are evolving from an email-focused product into a proactive AI assistant that operates across a user's full set of tools. The central design question this raises — how should a person collaborate with AI agents across many tasks simultaneously — does not yet have an established answer in the industry. The Design Engineer will be the person who answers it, setting conventions that the broader market will likely follow. Complete Ownership From Day One: This is the sole design function at the company. There is no design organization to navigate, no approval chain, and no handoff process. The Design Engineer works directly with the founders and is making foundational decisions about the product from the outset. Crucially, this is not work that is abstracted from the end user — it is directly shaping the system that sits inside someone's working life. For a designer who wants to feel the impact of what they ship, that is a rare opportunity at any stage. A Rare Moment to Join: We've shipped a working product with real users, which means the canvas is not blank — but the most consequential design decisions have not yet been made. Joining now means being present for the transition from a backend-heavy MVP to a product where UX becomes the primary differentiator. That window does not stay open for long. Working on the Defining Interface Problem of the AI Era: How humans prioritize, delegate to, and oversee AI agents is one of the most consequential UX questions of the next decade. This role sits at the center of that question in a practical, daily way — not as an abstract research exercise, but as a live product with users depending on it. For a designer who wants their work to matter beyond the company they are at, the problem space itself is the opportunity. Traction and Backing: We've raised $7.8M from Kleiner Perkins and founders of Box and Dropbox, and already have paying users at companies including Avoca, Rho, xAI, and Brex who use the product daily. This is a company with real market validation behind it, not a pre-revenue bet. #J-18808-Ljbffr