Founding Design Engineer
$150k - $250kHIKINEX
Founding Design Engineer Location: San Francisco, CA (On-site, 5 days/week) Compensation: $150,000–$250,000 Base + Equity (0.4–0.8%) About the Opportunity An early-stage, venture-backed AI startup is seeking a Founding Design Engineer to become its first design-focused engineering hire. This is a unique opportunity to own the end-to-end user experience for a highly technical AI platform, defining the product's design language while building production-ready frontend applications. Working directly with the founding team, you'll help shape the future of an AI-native enterprise platform by combining exceptional product design with hands‑on frontend engineering. What You'll Do Own product design and frontend implementation from concept to production. Design and build production‑ready interfaces using React and TypeScript . Establish the company's design language, design system, and UX patterns. Collaborate closely with founders to build intuitive experiences for complex technical workflows. Design for enterprise B2B software, platform products, and AI‑powered user experiences. What We're Looking For 1 - 5 years of experience in design, recent experience shipping frontend code in React/TypeScript Experience at a venture‑backed early‑stage startup or fast‑paced high‑growth company Has a self‑driven project with real users (portfolio, side project, or startup) Experience at an early‑stage startup or other fast‑paced environment. Experience designing technical products such as developer tools, enterprise SaaS, infrastructure, platform software, or AI products. Self‑starter who thrives in an ownership‑driven environment with minimal direction. Design/Arts/CS degree Skills Tech stack React, TypeScript, Figma, Tailwind CSS PLUS Next.js Figma Experience with design systems and component libraries. Familiarity with AI, agentic workflows, or Human‑Computer Interaction (HCI) principles. Visa Sponsorship The company can support: H-1B transfers O-1 visas TN visas J-1 visas Please note that new H-1B sponsorship is not available. Why Join? Be the first Design Engineer and help define the product from the ground up. Own both design and implementation without traditional design handoffs. Work directly with an experienced founding team in a collaborative, high‑impact environment. Receive competitive compensation and meaningful equity while helping build a category‑defining AI product. #J-18808-Ljbffr
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Cardboard
San Francisco, CA3 days ago - ..., slide deck, merchandise, or factory) should communicate the quality and ambition of our company behind it. As Orchard's Founding Design Engineer, you will establish the design function and own design across product, brand, marketing, software engineering, hardware, and...SuggestedWeekend work
Quiet Capital
San Francisco, CA23 hours ago $180k - $220k
...About The Role This is a founding-level, high-ownership position sitting at the intersection of design and engineering. You’ll be the sole bar-raiser for frontend UX across a fast-moving, early-stage B2B SaaS company building an AI-powered pricing optimization platform...SuggestedRemote workClera
San Francisco, CA3 hours ago- ...Design engineer who owns the full visual and interactive experience of Jinba's platform. You'll build our design system from the ground up... ...ship production code alongside the engineering team. This is a founding design role for someone who wants to shape how enterprise...Suggested
Jinba (YC W26)
San Francisco, CA3 hours ago - ...this is only the beginning. ERPs ran the physical world for half a century. Dryft is powering the next. THE ROLE As Founding Design Engineer, you'll work directly with our CEO, CTO, and customers to build magical user interfaces for our AI Agents. Your mission is...SuggestedRelocation
Dryft
San Francisco, CA21 hours ago $180k - $220k
...Job Description Job Description About the Role This is a founding-level frontend role at a seed-stage B2B SaaS startup building an... ...pricing intelligence platform. You'll own the entire frontend design system — tokens, component library, and interface patterns — ensuring...Clera
San Francisco, CA4 days ago- Several of our early stage enterprise startups are looking to bring on a Founding Design Engineer as part of their early teams. This is a rare opportunity to join a well funded, founder-led startup at the earliest stages and help build a category defining product from...
- ...voice AI behaves in live customer conversations, and measure the impact on real business outcomes. The role We're hiring a founding design engineer to own the experience of BotBot and the system we run the company on. Our products need interfaces for work that...Remote work
- ...opportunity. If you’re hungry to take ownership and build systems that matter, this is it. About The Role We’re hiring a Design Engineer to join our founding team in building the future of healthcare compliance AI. You’ll work directly with the founders, owning entire...Night shift
$100k - $150k
.... Work that used to take teams of lawyers weeks now happens in minutes. YC S24, founded by a former M&A attorney from Kirkland & Ellis and Gunderson Dettmer. We're hiring a design engineer to own how the product looks, feels, and works. You'll design features in Figma,...$180k - $250k
...cutting edge start up client who is distrusting the hardware engineering design workflow by creating AI training environments that will... ...high technical stakes. Is excited by the idea of joining a founding engineering team—helping build the function, not just join it...Full time$180k - $220k
...built on deep pricing experience from our founding team who have run over 150 pricing... ...assembled our team of 8 (pricing experts and engineers) to deliver that capability. Our main... ...Coherence is, and this role owns it: the design tokens, the component library, the frontend...Work experience placementWork at officeImmediate startVisa sponsorshipFlexible hours- Greylock Partners is seeking a Founding Design Engineer to join early-stage enterprise startups as one of the first hires. You will help define the product from day one, shape strategy, and make foundational decisions that influence the company’s direction as you tackle...
- Orchard Robotics seeks a Founding Design Engineer to establish the design function across product, brand, marketing, software, hardware, and our physical environments. You will work directly with our CEO and leaders to move from ambiguous problems to finished artifacts...
- Orchard is building an entirely new way for farmers to understand and operate their farms. As Orchard's Founding Design Engineer, you will establish the design function and own design across product, brand, marketing, software engineering, hardware, and our physical environments...
- ...About the job Founding Product Engineer About the role Success Matcher Recruitment is partnering with our client, the leading shared... ...contexts, and build solutions independently. Shape Design & APIs: Partner with backend engineers on API contracts while...
Success Matcher Recruitment
San Francisco, CA4 days ago - ...We founded Bild AI to tackle the mess that is blueprint reading, cost estimation, and permit applications in construction. It's a really... ...Actually use the algorithms, data structures, and system design that you learned Revolutionize how people read blueprints today...Full timeWork at officeRelocation
Bild AI
San Francisco, CA1 day ago - ...Founding Product Engineer Weave (YC W25) is building the definitive platform for understanding and improving how engineering teams work. We... ...that's great and we want to hear about it! We hope your design sensibilities are passable. The Role As Weave's founding...Immediate start
Weave, Inc.
San Francisco, CA2 days ago $200k - $250k
...discount governance, and CPQ workflows. We're looking for a Founding Product Engineer to own entire product modules end-to-end, work directly... ...Financial logic correctness, AI-native tooling, and clean API design are first-class priorities here. What You'll Do...Remote workVisa sponsorshipClera
San Francisco, CA2 days ago- ...Founding Product Engineer — Smart Bricks (USA Launch) Location: San Francisco, CA Type: Full-time Team: Founding Team (USA) Smart Bricks is building the world’s AI-native real estate investment infrastructure. Think of us as Bloomberg + Robinhood for global real estate...Full time
Smart Bricks
San Francisco, CA4 days ago - ...every day. Free lunch and dinners, competitive salary and equity. Flexible health coverage and 401K matching. We’re looking for a design engineer who obsesses over how software looks and feels to join us in San Francisco. You’ll own the product surface end-to-end–from...Flexible hours
CircleBack Inc
San Francisco, CA4 days ago $140k - $180k
...Job Description Job Description About the Role This is a founding engineering role at a seed-stage legal AI company, where you'll build core product features from the ground up alongside attorneys and AI engineers. You'll help shape the engineering culture and technical...Full timeContract workClera
San Francisco, CA4 days ago$150k - $200k
...to support and grow America's industrial GDP. We are hiring a founding product engineer to lead core 0-to-1 builds . The successful candidate will own the full-stack product lifecycle : scoping, designing, shipping, and iterating in the field. This role requires travel...Work at officeRemote workThe Misch Group
San Francisco, CA6 days ago$200k - $250k
...Description Job Description About the Role This is a founding-team engineering role at an early-stage AI-driven pricing and monetization platform... ...whole product modules end-to-end: scope with customers, design versioned APIs, build the UI, ship, and iterate. Design...Remote workVisa sponsorshipClera
San Francisco, CA4 days ago$190k - $210k
...well-funded, early-stage fintech startup is looking for a Founding Product Engineer to join a small, senior team building a new kind of collaborative... ...with a 40,000+ person waitlist. What You'll Do Design, develop, and deliver features, fixes, and improvements...Remote workClera
San Francisco, CA4 days ago$120k - $180k
...Description Job Description About the Role This is a founding product engineering role at a seed-stage AI/construction-tech startup,... ...-to-end and engaging directly with customers. Comfort designing architecture and building products from scratch (0-to-1 mindset...RelocationVisa sponsorshipClera
San Francisco, CA4 days ago- Open call for Founders / Founding Teams (Product Management / Engineering roles) In 1973 at Xerox PARC, Bob Metcalfe sketched a way for many computers to share a single wire — borrowing the throughput math from his study of Hawaii's ALOHAnet — and he and David Boggs built...
- ...University of Technology at 15. Joined Taobao at 17. At Alibaba, architected the core recommendation engine serving 500M daily users. What You'll Do: This is the first design role at Sirius. That means you'll set the visual and interaction language for everything we build...Full timeFlexible hours
- A software engineering company in San Francisco is looking for a founding engineer to work across the entire software stack. The ideal candidate will have deep experience in the Typescript ecosystem and strong CS fundamentals. Responsibilities include engaging with customers...Relocation
- A leading AI research company based in San Francisco is seeking a Full-Stack Engineer to develop features enhancing user skills with AI. The role involves prototyping, establishing technical direction, and collaborating across teams. Candidates should have at least 6 years...
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