Founding Design Engineer (AI-Native)

Founding Design Engineer (AI-Native)

Stealth-stage, venture-backed startup — critical infrastructure · Greater Seattle area, WA (in-person) · Full-time · Founding team

$170,000–$220,000 base + founding-level equity · Medical, dental, and vision coverage · 401(k)

The role

We're a stealth-stage, venture-backed startup building an AI-native platform for the teams that protect critical infrastructure — data centers, energy sites, and other regulated facilities. Our users work high-stakes, around-the-clock jobs, and they're experts at those jobs, not at software. If the interface needs a manual, we failed.

We're hiring a Founding Design Engineer to own the UI/UX end to end — a creative who codes. There's no designer here and none planned ahead of this seat. You're the design authority: the design language, the interaction model, the motion, and the production React that ships it. Design decisions get made by you. We'll evaluate you on your taste before your résumé — depth and quality of your work matter more to us than years.

Who you might be today

Great fits come from odd paths — there's no one correct background. But today, you're probably one of these:

• A design engineer, UX engineer, or design technologist at a product company known for craft — the one who owns the design system and ships it.

• A senior product designer who never stopped writing production code — your design files and your pull requests have the same author.

• A front-end engineer whose portfolio reads like a designer's — you've been the taste on every team you've joined.

• A founding designer or indie maker with shipped, polished products real people use — excellent side projects count.

Your work has probably lived where first-time users had to succeed on their own — consumer apps, point-of-sale, clinician-facing healthcare tools, field-service or logistics software, consumer-hardware companions. The industry matters less than the evidence: people who weren't technical used what you built, unassisted, and it held up.

If you've ever been told you're too design for engineering and too engineering for design — that's exactly the profile. You're probably not a fit if you design and hand off, or build and wait for mocks. This seat is both jobs, done by one person, on purpose.

What you'll do

• Define the design language from zero and grow it into a versioned design system the whole team builds against.

• Design and build the product's core interfaces across web and mobile — clear, calm, and fast for people working under real pressure.

• Make complex operational work feel simple, so a first-time user succeeds unassisted.

• Set the bar for craft — interaction, motion, accessibility, and performance.

• Work AI-native: agents write much of our code, every change gets human review, and the final call is always yours. You'll demo your real AI-assisted workflow in interviews.

What you bring

• Exceptional taste, with receipts. A portfolio of shipped interfaces we can walk through together — every decision, every tradeoff. This is the gate.

• You've made complex things feel simple for people who aren't technical.

• You ship what you design — production React and TypeScript. Depth and quality of experience matter more than years.

• Restraint — animation that explains, never decorates. Calm beats clever at 3 a.m.

• Daily, fluent use of AI coding agents as a core part of how you ship.

• U.S. citizenship — required for customer site access and work in export-controlled environments.

• Greater Seattle area, in-person — the founding team builds together.

Nice to have: real-time or data-dense interfaces · geospatial or live-video experience · React Native · design systems at scale · accessibility depth.

The team & the backing

Founded by a two-time founder with a federal national-security technology background and a military-veteran co-founder. Backed by institutional seed capital and strategic investors. A small founding engineering team — this seat completes it.

Compensation & benefits

$170,000–$220,000 base salary, set by depth and demonstrated craft, plus founding-level equity discussed individually. Benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage and a 401(k).

Process

Intro call → portfolio deep-dive → focused take-home → panel session → offer. The portfolio deep-dive is a working session on your shipped work. We move in days, not months. Apply through this posting, or via the recruiter who shared this description.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status. U.S. citizenship is required for this role due to customer site-access and export-control requirements.