Product Design Lead

Acelab Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Acelab Inc. is building Material Hub for architects and manufacturers. We seek a senior product designer to own the end-to-end UX, drive the design system, and shape core workflows. You will work daily with PMs and engineers who ship weekly and value fast iteration.

This independent role requires defining fixes, prioritizing work, and delivering impactful improvements now. You’ll lead platform-wide UX refreshes, new surfaces, and AI-powered features with real customer impact.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of product design experience, preferably in startups.
• A portfolio of complex, shipped B2B products.
• Experience building or overhauling a design system and driving adoption.
• Strong independent judgment and concise communication.
• Ability to prototype and test ideas with real users.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the design system, components, and tokens across Material Hub.
• Audit platform-wide UX, identify usability gaps, and drive improvements.
• Design new surfaces: shared workspaces, dashboards, activity logs, and AI tools.
• Support activation and retention by defining key user actions and flows.
• Participate in weekly customer calls and usability sessions with architects and manufacturers.

Skills

Product design

Design systems

Figma

User research

Prototyping

Tools

Claude Code

Job description

Every building around you represents hundreds of material decisions. Architects and designers drive $420B+ of those decisions annually in the US alone, and the tools they use to make them are broken. Acelab is the platform fixing that: structured material data, AI-powered workflows, and seamless collaboration between the people who specify and the manufacturers who supply.

Material Hub is in production and used by firms like Stantec, SOM, AECOM, and Gilead. The product works. Now it needs to feel as good as it is useful.

The Role

You'll own the user experience of Material Hub end to end: the design system, the core workflows, and the quality of what ships. You'll sit on the product team and work every day with PMs and engineers who move fast and ship weekly.

This is a senior, independent role. We don't need someone to wait for a spec or run every decision past a committee. We need someone who can look at a working product, see exactly where it falls short, decide what to fix first, and get it fixed.

What You’ll Work On

• The design system: own it. Overhaul the components, patterns, and tokens behind Material Hub so that every page feels like the same product, and partner with engineering so the system lives in code, not just in Figma.
• Platform-wide UX: audit the existing product, find the usability gaps in real workflows, and lead the work to close them, from quick fixes to full redesigns of outdated pages.
• New product surfaces: design the features on our roadmap, including shared workspaces, activity logs, dashboards and reporting, collaboration between architects and manufacturers, and AI-powered tools like our specification assistant.
• Activation and retention: help new users get to value fast and give them a reason to come back. Work with product and data to define the handful of actions that matter and design toward them.
• Research with real users: join customer calls every week, run usability sessions with architects, designers, and manufacturer partners, and bring what you learn back into the roadmap.
• The quality bar: review work before it ships, sweat the states and edge cases, and make sure the details (spacing, sizing, empty states, errors) are right in production, not just in the mockup.

Why Acelab

Real ownership. You'll set the design direction for a product that architects and manufacturers use every day. No design-by-committee.A product with traction. Material Hub has real customers and real usage. Your work changes how people do their jobs right away.AI at the center. We use AI internally and build it into the product. You'll be encouraged to prototype with the same tools our engineers use.Early-stage leverage. The system you build now will define how Acelab looks and feels as we scale.Competitive compensation: salary, equity, and benefits commensurate with experience.

What We’re Looking For

5+ years of product design experience, with a significant part of it at startups. You've shipped in environments where resources were thin and priorities changed fast.A portfolio of complex, shipped B2B products. Data-heavy workflows, multi-user collaboration, and tools that professionals use all day.Experience building or overhauling a design system and getting engineering to adopt it.Strong independent judgment. You can define the problem, make the call, and defend it, without needing extensive stakeholder sign-off.Clear, concise communication. You can explain a design decision in two minutes and adjust the depth to your audience.Hands-on experience vibe coding with tools like Claude Code. You don't wait for engineering to see an idea working: you build the prototype yourself, put it in front of users, and iterate.Strong Figma skills. You move easily between Figma and a working prototype, and you know when each one is the right tool.

What Makes Someone Stand Out

Strong data visualization work: dashboards, reporting, and making dense information easy to act on.Curiosity about architecture, construction, or building products. Domain expertise isn't required; we'll teach you the industry.