Founding Designer

Runbook Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Runbook Inc. in San Francisco is seeking a Founding Designer to define and own the design language for their AI platform. This role is pivotal in shaping both the product and the customer experience.

You'll work closely with customers to understand their needs, ensuring the final product earns their trust while maintaining high standards of design quality. This is an on-site position as part of a dynamic team with direct access to founders and clients.

Qualifications

• Track record of driving large, ambiguous projects to completion.
• Exceptional visual craft with attention to fine details.
• Strong instincts regarding product design and functionality.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the design language and strategy end-to-end.
• Shape the product through understanding customer needs.
• Onboard customers and build trust over time.
• Maintain high-quality standards in design.

Skills

Driving large projects

Strong product instincts

Exceptional visual craft

Hunger to operate beyond design

Tools

Coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code)

Job description

We're building the AI workforce for the physical economy — an agent platform that automates the work ops teams do manually every day. Moving information between emails, spreadsheets, TMS, ERP, phone calls. Our agents don't just automate a single task — they handle complex multi-day workflows, learn from feedback, iterate on their own instructions, and get to 90%+ autonomous execution fast.

Our founder Obaid Khan previously founded Motive (valued $5B+), so we're coming in with deep logistics expertise and a killer sales record. The challenges are real — and we're shipping to real customers today.

Founding Designer

Location

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

On-site

Department

Design

We're building the AI workforce for the physical economy — AI agents that replace the manual coordination layer running on emails, spreadsheets, TMS, ERP, and phone calls at companies that move, make, and deliver physical stuff. Our agents handle complex multi-day workflows, learn from feedback, and reach 90%+ autonomous execution in production.

Our founder Obaid Khan co-founded Motive — scaled it to $350M+ in revenue and a $5B+ valuation. We're going after the next big problem in the same market. Early team but we have multiple customers including Fortune 500. We move fast and hold a high bar.

Join us and build the core agent platform that automates complex operational workflows across the physical economy. You'll work across the stack — from AI agent orchestration to the product surfaces customers interact with daily.

What You'll Do

Define and own our design language/strategy end-to-end: product, marketing, customer communications, internal tools.

Shape the product itself, not just its surface. You'll sit with customers, understand what they actually do all day, and compress it into agent behavior alongside engineering.

Define how we onboard customers, how we communicate with them, and how the product earns their trust over months of use.

Set the quality bar. Early decisions compound — great companies are built on great taste.

Exceptional visual craft and obsession over the fine details.

What We're Looking For

A track record of driving large, ambiguous projects to done — not completing tickets inside someone else's design.

Strong product instincts. You can tell when something is 95% there and still wrong, and you push until it's right.

Hunger to operate beyond design — into product, customer, strategy. You want massive ownership on an early team and are energized by the ambiguity that comes with it.

How We Work

Designers will ship to production here. We'll set you up with the coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, whatever works) to make that real.

You'll help define the toolset you need to do the job.

Small team, high trust, low process. Direct access to founders and customers. In-person in SF.