Founding UX/UI Designer - Physical AI Infrastructure

Job Description

Job Description

Are you…

A UX/UI designer who got into this field to solve hard, genuinely consequential problems — to make complex systems feel clear, trustworthy, and human — only to find yourself resizing buttons and polishing marketing pages for products that long ago stopped challenging you?

Have you ever looked at the operational dashboard of a mission-critical system — alerts firing, operators making split-second decisions, millions of dollars in infrastructure hanging in the balance — and thought: "Someone needs to design this, so it actually works for the people running it?" —Could that someone be you?

What would it mean to your career, your professional development, and your personal fulfillment — to spend the next several years designing the intelligence layer of a platform that is reshaping how the infrastructure that powers the entire AI economy operates?

When was the last time you opened a design file on a Monday morning, genuinely fired up about what you might solve by Friday? If you're having trouble remembering … keep reading.

If you have 5+ years designing UX/UI for industrial, enterprise, or other high-stakes systems—and a portfolio that turns complexity into clarity—discover what Glacian is building.

Meet Glacian

Glacian is a Physical AI software company solving the data center power and cooling bottleneck. We provide a deterministic safety and intelligence layer that fuses high-fidelity physics-based digital twins with meta-reinforcement learning to understand the complex physics, environment, and industrial systems of data centers.

Why This Role — and Why Now

This is not a business-as-usual UX role at a SaaS company building another app. It is a rare invitation to define the design language for a groundbreaking AI infrastructure platform at the exact moment when that platform moves from validated technology into the hands of operators, engineers, and leadership teams making real-time, high-stakes decisions in real world mission critical environments.

The person who joins now will:

• Work directly with the founding team to establish the visual language, design system, and interaction patterns that define how operators experience the Glacian platform — from the ground up.
• Own the full design arc: user research, wireframe, prototype, high-fidelity design, engineering handoff. The whole journey, not just one layer.
• Translate genuinely complex AI-driven insights and multi-role operational workflows into interfaces that feel clear, trustworthy, and immediately actionable under pressure.
• Shape the design culture of an early-stage company: your decisions on standards, tooling, and process will set the foundation for the entire design function.
• Contribute to making mission-critical infrastructure more efficient and more sustainable. The stakes are not cosmetic.
• Have the opportunity to grow into a leadership role as the company scales, with meaningful early-stage equity and the career trajectory of a person who built something that matters.

This is a collaborative role where you’ll design systems, shape strategy, and drive innovation from day one.

Core responsibilities

Mission-Critical Interface Design: FTE: ~35% | Daily

Create dashboards, alerts, workflows, and visualizations that deliver clear, actionable, real-time data to operators, engineers, and managers in demanding settings. Build visual hierarchies and interactions that instantly convey safety, reliability, and system health. Design every detail to inspire user confidence and minimize cognitive effort when it matters most.

User Research and Workflow Analysis: FTE: ~25% | Weekly

Lead user research, interviews, and usability tests with enterprise and industrial users of all backgrounds. Turn insight into design improvements. Champion user needs related to product decisions while ensuring safety, compliance, and technical requirements are met.

Prototyping and Design Execution: FTE: ~25% | Daily

Create wireframes, prototypes, and polished designs for the entire product. Build and manage the design system—including UI components, visual standards, and interaction patterns—to guarantee consistency and clear communication. Work closely with engineers to deliver precise, reliable implementations.

Design Systems and Standards: FTE: ~10% | Weekly

Develop and maintain the design system—including components, visual guidelines, motion, and patterns—for use across the platform. Make standards easy for engineers to access and follow. Spot issues early and resolve them before they affect the product.

Cross-Functional Collaboration and Leadership: FTE: ~5% | As Needed

Advocate for design in product and engineering discussions, clearly explain your decisions to non-design stakeholders, and help guide product direction. As the team expands, mentor junior designers and help build the design culture, processes, and tools that drive progress.

Required Minimum Qualifications

• A track record of 5+ years in enterprise UX/UI and a knack for making the complicated simple, where clarity, trust, and operational safety are non-negotiable. 
• This role specifically requires experience deploying and operating software in on-premise, operationally constrained, and reliability-critical environments. A background built exclusively in consumer applications or fully managed cloud platforms will not provide the foundation this role demands.
• Proficiency with AI-assisted design tools, including one or more of the following: Claude, Figma mcp, Adobe Firefly, MidJourney, Runway, or equivalent platforms. Familiarity with emerging AI-assisted design methods and their application to workflow and interface design.
• Demonstrated experience conducting user research and usability testing in enterprise, industrial, or operational contexts.
• Strong command of design systems: the ability to build, document, and steward component libraries and visual standards that scale across a growing product.
• Experience collaborating directly with engineering teams to ensure implementation fidelity, including the ability to communicate design specifications clearly and resolve implementation tradeoffs.
• High comfort level operating in an early-stage environment where roadmaps shift, priorities evolve, and design decisions are often made with incomplete information. Comfort with ambiguity is essential.
• Clear, effective communication — written and verbal — across design, product, and engineering audiences, including the ability to translate design rationale into terms that inform and align non-design stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

The following are not required but represent the background of an especially strong candidate:

• Experience designing industrial operations software, DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management), or enterprise facility management platforms.
• Familiarity with AI dashboards, predictive analytics, and multi-role operational workflows—especially where latency, alerting, and quick decisions are critical.
• Early-stage startup experience: building design processes and tools from scratch, setting standards, and iterating quickly under pressure.
• Leadership: mentoring designers, establishing team processes, or managing product design.
• Knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG) for dashboards and operational interfaces.
• Familiarity with data visualization and designing high-density information displays.

The ideal candidate is:

• Practical, down-to-earth, and collaborative — someone who brings solutions, not friction, to a high-performing founding team.
• Fast-moving, adaptive, and self-directed: able to identify what needs designing next without waiting to be told.
• Deeply committed to communicating security, reliability, and safety through every design decision — not as a constraint, but as a design value.
• Proficient with AI design tools and genuinely interested in how AI-assisted methods are changing what designers can do and how fast they can do it.
• Balance the cost and efficiency of utilizing AI design tools.
• Able to mentor and scale a design function: someone who builds process and culture, not just artifacts.
• Skilled at balancing and advocating for the needs of multiple stakeholders in high-stakes operational environments, without losing sight of the user.

Other Considerations

• Full-time position. This role may occasionally require extended hours to support customer deployments, critical milestones, or product launches.
• Background and investigative checks may be conducted as part of the hiring process; results must be satisfactory for the company.
• We thrive on the collaboration found in our physical offices and strongly encourage local candidates to apply. However, for the right fit, we welcome remote candidates located anywhere in the U.S.
• Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here represent those that an individual must meet to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

Work regularly requires the individual to sit or stand for extended periods while using computers, development tools, and digital collaboration platforms to communicate with team members and produce software. While performing job duties, the individual is regularly required to use hands and arms to operate computer keyboards and pointing devices. The individual is regularly required to talk and hear during in-person, phone, and video-based communications. The role may occasionally require standing, walking, or carrying light equipment when visiting client facilities or data center environments.

Specific vision abilities required for this job include sustained close vision for extended screen use and the ability to adjust focus across multiple monitors and varying working distances. Occasional travel to client sites, data center facilities, or industry events may require extended periods of walking, standing, or sitting in transit.

This role is primarily performed in a standard office or remote home office setting. Noise levels are typically low to moderate. Occasional visits to operational data center environments may involve moderate noise levels, raised flooring, and active equipment areas. No routine exposure to chemicals or industrial process hazards is expected in the primary work setting.

Benefits and Growth Opportunity

At Glacian, you'll join an ambitious team building the future of AI-powered infrastructure for one of the world's fastest-growing industries. We offer competitive compensation, meaningful equity ownership, flexible work arrangements, comprehensive health benefits, paid time off, and opportunities for continuous learning and professional development. As an early team member, you'll have direct exposure to customers, investors, and strategic decisions, with the opportunity to take on increasing responsibility as the company scales. We believe exceptional people create exceptional companies, and we are committed to providing an environment where talented individuals can grow their careers while helping shape the future of sustainable, intelligent data centers.

Glacian is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Employment is based solely on merit and qualifications directly related to professional competence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, or any other basis protected by law. Our company is also committed to providing reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities in the employment application process and will consider reasonable accommodation to enable them to perform essential job functions.