Founding Designer

Emergence Capital Partners; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Emergence Capital Partners is seeking a senior product designer to shape how users interact with AI-powered products. You will own the design process from research through visual design, defining patterns for AI-native workflows and building trust with users.

You'll create wireframes, prototypes, and robust design systems, collaborating closely with founders, engineers, and customers to deliver usable, enterprise-grade experiences.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of product design experience with end-to-end ownership.
• Experience designing complex workflows, data-heavy applications, or enterprise software.
• Strong proficiency in Figma and AI tools, including rapid prototyping/wireframing and design systems.
• Solid understanding of interaction design principles and ability to create intuitive user experiences.
• Experience conducting user research and translating findings into actionable design decisions.
• Excellent visual design skills with attention to typography, color, spacing, and hierarchy.
• Have owned design systems and shipped features, not just concepts.
• Strong communication skills, ability to articulate design rationale and collaborate with engineers and PMs.
• Comfort with ambiguity and rapid iteration in a fast-moving startup environment.

Responsibilities

• Own product design end-to-end: research, IA, interaction design, and visual design.
• Define interaction patterns for AI-native workflows and building user trust.
• Create wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs communicating product vision.
• Conduct user research and translate insights into product decisions.
• Build and maintain design systems for consistent UI across the product.
• Collaborate with engineers through implementation to ensure design quality.
• Define UX vision and strategy for enterprise AI-powered workflows.
• Contribute to product strategy and roadmap discussions.

Skills

Product design

User research

Information architecture

Interaction design

Visual design

Design systems

Communication

Ambiguity handling

Tools

Figma

Prototyping tools

Job description

About the Role

We're designing the interfaces for a new generation of AI products. You'll shape how users interact with complex systems – making powerful technology feel simple, intuitive, and trustworthy.

Designing for AI presents unique challenges: How do you help users understand what the AI is doing? How do you build trust when outputs are probabilistic? How do you create workflows that leverage AI capabilities without overwhelming users? You'll be solving these problems daily, defining interaction patterns that don't exist yet.

This is a high-ownership role. You'll be the design voice in the room, working directly with founders, engineers, and customers to define what we build. You should be comfortable with ambiguity, excited by constraints, and motivated by shipping products that real people use.

What You'll Do

• Own product design end-to-end: user research, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design

• Define interaction patterns for AI-native workflows, surfacing AI capabilities, handling uncertainty, and building user trust

• Create wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs that communicate product vision clearly

• Conduct user research – interviews, usability testing, data analysis and translate insights into product decisions

• Build and maintain design systems that enable consistent, high-quality UI across the product

• Work closely with engineers through implementation, ensuring design quality in the final product

• Define a clear UX vision and strategy for how enterprise users interact with AI-powered workflows, balancing innovation with usability

• Contribute to product strategy and roadmap discussions as a key voice in what we build

Qualifications

• 4+ years of product design experience, with a portfolio demonstrating taste and end-to-end product design work

• Experience designing complex workflows, data-heavy applications, or enterprise software

• Strong proficiency in Figma and other AI tools, including rapid prototyping/wireframing and design systems

• Solid understanding of interaction design principles and ability to create intuitive user experiences

• Experience conducting user research and translating findings into actionable design decisions

• Excellent visual design skills with attention to typography, color, spacing, and hierarchy

• Have owned design systems and shipped features, not just concepts

• Strong communication skills, ability to articulate design rationale and collaborate effectively with engineers and PMs

• Comfort with ambiguity and rapid iteration in a fast-moving startup environment

Nice to Have

• Experience designing AI-powered products or features

• Background in designing B2B or enterprise applications

• Experience at an early-stage startup or designing 0→1 products that will serve massive deployments to large enterprises

• Familiarity with front-end development (HTML, CSS, React) to facilitate engineer collaboration

• Domain expertise in financial services, legal, healthcare, or other enterprise verticals

• Experience building and scaling design systems from scratch and have scaled it across multiple surfaces (app, web, and brand)