Product Engineer (Design)

PlanLab, Inc.; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Visa sponsorship

Hybrid work in London

Share options 0.25–0.75% vest 4y/1y

Equipment and AI tools provided

London office with flexibility

Job summary

Planlab is an AI-first company in London hiring a Product Engineer (Design) to make complex applications easier to use. You'll work with our CTO on user flows, lead interaction design and visual direction for the main app, talk to customers, design and ship improvements, test and release them, then follow up on how they work in practice.

We build with React, Redux and TypeScript, and use AI coding tools for implementation.

Qualifications

• Portfolio of complex apps with strong UX and visual design.
• Ability to turn ambiguous problems into clear user flows.
• Experience designing and shipping interfaces with AI tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship interfaces for complex, data-heavy workflows.
• Join customer sessions and work with delivery teams to reduce friction.
• Lead interaction design and visual direction with the CTO.
• Collaborate with platform engineers on shared components and performance.
• Use AI coding tools daily to implement, validate, and release.
• Build reusable components, guidance and testing systems.

Skills

Frontend engineering

Design skills

Interaction design

Visual design

React

Redux

TypeScript

AI tools

Tools

React

Redux

TypeScript

AI coding tools

Job description

TLDR: Product Engineer (Design) at Planlab

• Company: We’re a seed-funded team of eight building AI software for construction and infrastructure projects. We automate our own work, including writing software with coding agents.
• Role: Make complex applications easier to use. Work with our CTO and co-founder on user flows, and lead interaction design and visual direction. You’ll talk to customers, design and build improvements, test and release them, then follow up on how they work in practice.
• Shared tools: Build reusable components, design guidance and automated checks so the team and our coding agents can build better interfaces.
• You: A frontend engineer with strong design skills, or an excellent technical designer who can build and ship. We’re looking for good interaction and visual judgment, initiative and clear communication. Show us complex applications you’ve worked on and explain your contribution.
• How we build: React, Redux and TypeScript. We use AI coding tools for all implementation. You’ll direct the agents, review their code and check that it works. We release several times a day. Software engineering experience is a big plus.
• First 90 days: Fix problems customers run into every day, start improving our shared components and design guidance, and take on one substantial customer workflow.
• Terms: London office, some hybrid flexibility. Salary reflects skill and experience. Options: fully diluted, four-year vest, one-year cliff. Equipment, software and AI tokens provided.

London · Full-time · £80–160k · 0.25–0.75% share options · Visa sponsorship

About Us

We're an AI-first company, and that starts with our own work. We automate what we can and do old-school what we must, building the tools and knowledge that teams of humans and AIs need to run construction and infrastructure projects.

Our product consists of two halves: a customer-facing platform that runs both standard and bespoke project scheduling apps, supports large-scale datasets, complex integrations and large groups of users and runs an AI copilot; and an internal AI operating system that automates and supports our own work. It dials into meetings, analyses customers' screen-shares and shared datasets, builds implementation plans, orchestrates coding agents and validation systems - and pushes PRs.

We're a small team in London (8 people), growing fast, and looking for people who see a problem and run at it - figuring things out, and not stopping at “that's not my job.” Any new joiner can make a big difference. We raised our Seed round earlier this year at a ~$25m valuation, and are now aggressively scaling the business.

Our customers are large contractors, infrastructure builders and asset owners. They build railways, highways, airports, power plants, solar farms, steel mills and more. We work with them to improve the construction schedules for these assets.

The Role

We’re looking for someone who loves product, user interfaces, and user experience. You might be a frontend engineer with strong design skills, or an exceptional technical designer who can take an idea through to working software. What matters is your ability to make complex applications feel understandable, useful, and good to use.

Our founding thesis is to automate our own work. We work through real customer problems, do what is needed to solve them, and build the systems that let us do it better next time. For this role, that means designing great experiences and turning your judgment into components, guidance, and checks that help our coding agents build more of them.

We also build software that generates and customises software. Alongside our main application, we create customer‑specific interfaces and workflows using AI coding agents. We need great product design in the application itself and in the components, guidance, and testing systems that help us build more of it.

You’ll work with our CTO & co-founder on user flow design and take the lead on interaction design and visual direction for our main application.

You’ll own getting your work into customers’ hands: understanding the problem, exploring approaches, designing the experience, driving implementation with AI coding tools, and improving it after release.

You’ll also develop the shared component library, design guidance, and testing systems that help our team and coding agents produce consistent, high‑quality interfaces across customer workflows.

What We Offer

• Salary ranging £80k to £160k (the range is deliberately wide to reflect the wide range of skill levels candidates bring to this role. We believe exceptional skill should be rewarded)
• Share options ranging from 0.25% – 0.75% (4-year vest, 1-year cliff, fully diluted)
• Nice office in London with some flexibility on hybrid
• Skilled worker visa sponsorship if needed - we’re a very international team
• Highly entrepreneurial environment
• All the equipment, software and tokens you need to do the best job
• Unlimited headroom to grow

An example: the month-end update

At month-end, a project team opens its current schedule and brings together submissions from many subcontractors. They import information from other software systems, review each submission for errors, omissions, and hidden changes, and cross-check it against the project’s wiki-style knowledge base.

The project wiki brings guidance and supporting evidence into the workflow. Help users find the right context and understand where it comes from. Demo workspace.

They then produce a combined update and assess what changed: schedule logic, driving paths, project risk, and the impacts they need to communicate in reports.

You’ll help make that whole process coherent. How should users move between submissions, comparisons, supporting evidence, and the combined schedule? How do we surface an important change at the right moment? How do we help someone understand its consequences and produce a useful impact report?

These are the kinds of product and design problems you’ll work on, and the patterns you develop should help us solve similar problems across many customers.

Loopy turns a request into analysis and a report. Design how users ask, clarify, review, and act on AI-generated work. This demo thread is shortened for presentation.

What you’ll do

• Design and ship interfaces for complex, data-heavy workflows, from the overall experience to individual interactions.
• Join customer sessions, work closely with our delivery team, and use product analytics to understand where people struggle and what helps.
• Lead interaction design and visual direction, partnering with our CTO on user flows.
• Work with delivery colleagues to understand customer needs, and with platform engineers on shared components, performance, and deeper technical changes.
• Use AI coding tools daily to drive implementation, validation, and release.
• Build reusable components, guidance, and testing systems that improve the UX of interfaces created by our team and coding agents.
• Follow your work after release, learn from real usage, and keep improving it.

What we’re looking for

We want to see a portfolio of complex applications where you designed and shipped a significant part of the experience, or all of it. Work involving substantial data, technical interfaces, or complicated user workflows is particularly relevant.

You should bring:

• Excellent interaction design and visual judgment, with a love of making complicated software intuitive.
• The ability to turn an ambiguous problem into a clear user flow and a working product.
• Clear, structured communication: explain design decisions and trade-offs to customers and colleagues, make your assumptions explicit, and use feedback to improve the solution.
• Enough technical fluency to drive implementation using AI coding tools and take responsibility for getting it shipped.
• Initiative: you notice problems, explore solutions, and move work forward independently.
• A habit of testing your assumptions through real use and improving what you’ve built.

Previous software engineering experience is highly beneficial, particularly React or another frontend framework. We’re also open to exceptional technical designers who can demonstrate their ability to build and ship.

Technical environment

Our frontend uses React and Redux, with TypeScript throughout the stack. We use several streaming and synchronisation mechanisms to keep data and interfaces up to date as changes arrive.

In practice, we use AI coding tools for all our implementation work. The ideal candidate understands the stack deeply and is comfortable building this way: directing coding agents, reviewing what they produce, debugging problems, and validating the experience in the running application. That technical understanding helps you make sound decisions about state, data flow, performance, and how an interaction should behave.

How we work

Planlab is a small team of people with high initiative. We ship continuously, with multiple releases a day. We use AI coding tools daily and expect you to drive the whole process of getting your designs into production.

We experiment, make decisions, and learn by doing. Sometimes an approach works; sometimes we discover that we got it wrong and change it. Following through, checking the result, and iterating are part of the job.

Success means customers have less difficulty using our software, enjoy working in it every day, and discover powerful functionality naturally as they need it.

Your first 90 days

You’ll get close to our users and start shipping from the outset. In your first three months, we’d aim for three outcomes:

• Find and fix everyday friction. Join customer sessions, work with our delivery team, and use product analytics to understand where users get stuck. Ship improvements as you learn, and check whether they make everyday tasks easier.
• Build the foundations for great UX at scale. Develop an initial set of automated design agents, shared component libraries, and supporting guidance and tests. Put these into use with the rest of the team so good interaction patterns carry through into the interfaces they build.
• Reshape a demanding workflow. Take a meaningful workflow, such as reviewing subcontractor submissions during a month-end update, from exploration to a shipped experience. Partner with our CTO on the user flow, lead interaction and visual design, and drive implementation using AI coding tools. Follow it into real use and improve it based on what you learn.

Success means customers can complete tasks more easily, discover useful capabilities without being shown, and understand what to do next. The rest of the team can build on what you’ve created.