Member of Technical Staff, Product Design Engineer

Pantograph; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Pantograph, a robotics startup in San Francisco, seeks a design engineer to shape how people interact with our robots. You will design and build the user interface used to explore capabilities, run tasks, and understand what the robot sees, does, and when to step in.

You'll own the product experience from setup to everyday use, collaborating with hardware, research, and software teams. Prototyping with real robots and users will be central, with rapid iteration and clear communication of

Qualifications

• Excellent visual and interaction design demonstrated by shipped work.
• Ability to invent new ways to interact with complex systems.
• Prototype quickly from idea to something users can try.
• Build functional interfaces in code and debug with AI tools.
• Focus on interface feel: responsiveness, motion, feedback, and error handling.
• Experience working with users and taking ownership of a product.
• Explain design decisions and tradeoffs with engineers.
• Brand-conscious with a consistent visual identity.

Skills

Visual and interaction design

Prototyping

UI development in code

Cross-functional collaboration

User research

Job description

Pantograph is building general purpose robots by training models on internet-scale video. We believe the path to capable robots runs through general intelligence rather than narrow, robot-specific skills. We believe there is an enormous amount of work worth doing in the physical world that would make life better for people. As AI models make it easier to build software around our needs, we believe robots can give people that same power to shape the physical world.

Across research, hardware, and software, we believe in finding simple ideas that work, doing them extremely well, and scaling them up. We value clear thinking, careful execution, and systems we can understand, trust, and improve.

We're looking for a design engineer to shape how people interact with our robots. You'll design and build the interface our customers and partners use to explore capabilities, run tasks, and understand what's happening. A robot is moving in a real space, and its interface needs to help people understand what it sees, what it's doing, and when they need to step in. We want that experience to feel intuitive and exciting to use.

You'll have substantial ownership over the product experience, from first setup to everyday use. You'll interact with our early customers and well as with our hardware, research, and software teams, taking ideas from sketches to working prototypes to shipped features. The work could span live camera views, spatial interfaces, task controls, and how we communicate progress, uncertainty, or something going wrong.

We're looking for excellent design sensibilities, creativity, and a drive to build things people love to use. You don't need to be the strongest programmer on the team, but you do need enough technical proficiency to implement your ideas, understand how they work, and improve them. We expect you to use AI coding tools heavily, prototype quickly, and refine the experience by trying it with real robots and real people.

You might be a good fit if you:

• Have excellent visual and interaction design skills, with shipped work that shows your care for the details
• Enjoy inventing new ways to interact with complex systems and making them feel understandable
• Move quickly from an idea to something people can try, and learn through rapid prototyping
• Can build functional interfaces in code, use APIs, and debug problems with the help of AI tools
• Care about how an interface feels in use: its responsiveness, motion, feedback, and behavior when something goes wrong
• Enjoy working directly with users and taking ownership of a product as it evolves
• Can explain your design decisions clearly and work through tradeoffs with engineering teammates
• Have a good feel for brand, with the ability to give our product and early customer touchpoints a consistent visual identity
• Use AI tools extremely effectively

Bonus if you've worked with:

• Video game design or development, especially interfaces, controls, and player feedback
• Creative tools, maps, operations consoles, or other interfaces for complex systems running live
• 3D or spatial interfaces, interactive visualization, or live video
• Connected hardware, device setup, or experiences that span physical and digital interactions

We'd love to see a portfolio of your work, including something you've built that we can try. Help us understand what you owned, the decisions you made, and what you learned from people using it.

We care much more about what you've built than credentials. We're a small, fast-moving team working together in person in San Francisco. If this sounds exciting to you, we want to hear from you.