Founding Designer

Alkonos; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Meaningful equity

Visa sponsorship

Job summary

Wakefield is an applied research lab focused on AI-native security services. You will own how all of it looks and feels—from the console to the design system, reports, and the Wakefield brand and website.

As our first designer, you’ll shape the user experience, design system, and visual language, collaborating with engineers and researchers to deliver clear, compelling product insights for security stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Strong portfolio of shipped product work with precise visual and interaction craft.
• Experience at a fast-growing startup.
• Built design from scratch: a design system, a brand, or both.
• Shipped with engineers to real users and kept iterating after launch.
• You make complex, dense systems simple without hiding what matters.
• You use AI tools every day to prototype and ship, and still own every detail.
• You design for fun because you genuinely care about the craft.

Responsibilities

• Proof that anyone can follow: a recording, the requests and a fix, in one view.
• Following agents at work: what they're doing, why, and what they'll try next.
• Reports a CISO hands to a board, and briefings for leaders who aren't technical.
• Trust and control: scope, approvals, and stopping a scan at once.
• One design system across the console and the website.
• The Wakefield brand: identity, website and motion.

Skills

Strong portfolio

Startup experience

Design system

Engineering collaboration

Complex systems

AI prototyping

Craft focus

Job description

We find and fix every vulnerability in our customers' applications. When a new AI model is released, we run it against their applications before attackers do, and close what it finds.

About Wakefield

Wakefield is an applied research lab working on AI-native security services. We build security agents and publish how they work. Our methods, benchmark and raw data are public so anyone can check them.

• Source code optional: blackbox agents sign in as every role and test the running app. Whitebox agents read the code on every pull request.

• If Wakefield can't prove it, the customer never sees it: agents replay each finding in a real browser and record it. Then Wakefield writes the fix, ready to open as a pull request, and retests it. We have SLAs for zero false positives.

• One service that replaces DAST, SAST, SCA, SBOM, and the tests companies run in-house or buy in.

The role

Wakefield's agents do work a person used to do: test an application, prove a bug, write the fix. The people who rely on them range from security engineers to a CEO who has never heard of an IDOR. As our first designer, you'll own how all of it looks and feels: the console, the design system, the reports, and the Wakefield brand and website.

What you'll work on

• Proof that anyone can follow: a recording, the requests and a fix, in one view.

• Following agents at work: what they're doing, why, and what they'll try next.

• Reports a CISO hands to a board, and briefings for leaders who aren't technical.

• Trust and control: scope, approvals, and stopping a scan at once.

• One design system across the console and the website.

• The Wakefield brand: identity, website and motion.

Requirements

• A strong portfolio of shipped product work with precise visual and interaction craft

• Time at a fast-growing startup

• You've built design from scratch: a design system, a brand, or both

• You've shipped with engineers to real users and kept iterating after launch

• You make complex, dense systems simple without hiding what matters

• You use AI tools every day to prototype and ship, and still own every detail

• You design for fun because you genuinely care about the craft

Nice to have

• You code: you prototype or ship production UI and design system code yourself

• You've designed security, developer or data-heavy products

How we hire

1. Meet the co-founders.

2. A one-week paid trial with us in the office.

3. Offer.

Logistics

• Location: San Francisco, in person. Most of the team is in the office every day.

• Compensation: Competitive salary and meaningful equity.

• Visa: We sponsor visas and support you through the immigration process.