Lead Designer

Foundation; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Foundation is hiring a lead designer located in San Francisco to transform the homebuilding experience. You will drive the next stages of growth by blending design with AI in a high-impact role.

The ideal candidate has over 7 years of experience in high-growth tech companies and excels in collaborative, full-stack design. This is a chance to redefine real estate design in the AI era.

Qualifications

• 7-10+ years of experience as a designer at high-growth, venture-backed tech companies.
• Experience in product strategy and product launches.
• Ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Drive Foundation’s growth through design intersection with AI and real estate.
• Elevate and accelerate core products for homebuyers and homebuilders.
• Deliver AI-native workflow products to improve productivity.

Skills

Collaborative design

Product strategy

Full-stack design

Customer engagement

Job description

Location

San Francisco; Boulder

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

On-site

Department

Design

Introduction

Foundation is hiring a lead designer to accelerate our core business, modernize homebuilding, and transform the experience of buying, selling, and owning homes.

About Foundation

Backed by $6.8M in funding from leading VCs (including Y Combinator), Foundation is an ex-Opendoor team transforming residential real estate.

Foundation’s first product is the native customer experience platform for homebuilders — think “Shopify for Homebuilders.” We work with enterprise‑scale homebuilders to deliver a modern digital customer experience, dramatically improving both their customer happiness and the productivity of their teams. In two years, we’ve demonstrated clear product‑market fit and rapid growth — all with just contract design support.

We’re still in the first of three overlapping phases of growth and company‑building:

1. Transformative, AI‑driven vertical SaaS for homebuilding — a public‑scale opportunity in its own right.

2. The enterprise ecosystem for real estate. Homebuilders are the economic engine that starts this flywheel, unlocking an order‑of‑magnitude larger opportunity. This ecosystem fosters collaboration between (and network effects with) adjacent trillion‑dollar industries — lending, title, home insurance, home services, retail, and more.

3. The AI‑native home operating system and interface. The economic engine of vertical SaaS and the network effects of the enterprise ecosystem fund and fuel the flywheel that enables us to (profitably) deliver the transformative consumer AI experience for homebuyers and homeowners. Find, buy, and operate your home — all with Foundation.

Foundation’s First Design Lead

We’re hiring our first hands‑on design leader to work directly with our founders, customers, and engineers. We’re looking for a full‑stack, impact‑obsessed, AI‑accelerated designer who wants to transform a major pillar of the U.S. economy and help redefine design for the AI era.

The Job

You’ll play a central role in driving Foundation’s next stages of growth — working at the intersection of design, AI, and real estate transformation.

Here’s a taste of potential priorities:

• Elevate and accelerate our core products: both consumer (homebuyer + homeowner) and homebuilder experiences

• Deliver our first AI‑native workflow products to transform back‑office productivity in one of the biggest industries in the U.S.

• Collaborate with marketing and sales to communicate our brand and value to every U.S. builder in the U.S.

• Research, discover, design and launch our next major product lines: a new AI‑native home shopping and sales experience, and a collaboration platform to streamline and enrich the home buying process for buyers, builders, lenders (mortgage), and title companies.

Throughout, you’ll play a hands‑on role in shaping our products, roadmap, marketing, and vision.

The Requirements

• You have 7-10+ years of experience as a designer at high‑growth, venture‑backed technology companies.

• You are a full‑stack designer — from research through exploration, product launches, and continuous improvement. Bonus points if you obsess about everything from product strategy and feature‑level pixels to the fine details of marketing campaigns.

• You’re highly collaborative, and do your best work by engaging deeply with cross‑functional groups of customers, engineers, PMs, and operators.

• You love getting to know new customers and new markets.