Product Designer

Tavus; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work schedule

Unlimited PTO

Healthcare coverage

Gear stipends

Job summary

Tavus, an AI research lab, is seeking a craft-obsessed, systems-minded Product Designer to evolve our product suite and own the Tavus design systems—the components, tokens, and patterns that every surface we build on top of depends on. This role demands exceptional VisD skills, typography, color, spacing, and motion craft, with six-plus years of UX-focused experience.

You'll collaborate with product, engineering, and leadership in a fast-paced environment to ensure the system is scalable,

Qualifications

• An indefatigable visual designer with an exceptional eye for typography, color, layout, and detail, plus motion design chops.
• A genuinely capable product designer with 6+ years of experience and solid UX judgment.
• Experienced building and governing design systems at scale.
• Original, not just tasteful—able to produce distinct, defensible decisions.
• Principled and able to defend design choices with clear reasoning.
• Decisive in ambiguity—weighs tradeoffs and moves ahead with confidence.
• Technically fluent, able to work near code and align build with design.
• Built for startup pace, protecting quality while moving fast.

Responsibilities

• Architect for scale: Define token architecture, component structure, and theming model.
• Own governance, not just files: Establish standards, documentation, and contribution model.
• Partner deeply with engineering: Work with frontend engineers to ensure faithful implementation.
• Elevate craft everywhere: Bring meticulous visual and interaction craft, including motion.
• Drive adoption: Build artifacts, documentation, and relationships to promote system usage.

Skills

VisD craft

Typography

Color theory

Layout

Motion design

UX judgment

Design systems

Startup pace

Job description

About Us

Tavus is an AI research lab pioneering human computing. We’re building PALs: a new kind of application that closes the gap between people and machines, free from the friction of today’s systems. Our real-time human simulation models let machines see, hear, respond, and even look real—enabling meaningful, face-to-face conversations. PALs combine the emotional intelligence of humans with the reach and reliability of machines, making them capable, trusted agents available 24/7, in every language, on our terms.

Imagine a therapist anyone can afford. A personal trainer that adapts to your schedule. A fleet of medical assistants that can give every patient the attention they need. With Tavus, individuals, enterprises, and developers can all build PALs to connect, understand, and act with empathy at scale.

We’re a Series B company backed by world‑class investors including Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, and Scale Venture Partners.

Be part of shaping a future where humans and machines truly understand each other.

The Role

We are seeking a craft-obsessed, systems-minded Product Designer to evolve our product suite and own & grow the Tavus design systems – the components, tokens, and patterns that every surface we build on top of depends on.

This is a Product Design role that demands exceptional VisD skills and experience. We need someone with exceptional eye and hand for typography, color, spacing, and detail, who can bring real motion craft to how our system feels in use. But the design system doesn't exist in a vacuum: It has to hold up under real product and UX problems, across a growing portfolio of products, so strong product design judgment is a must.

This role has a deliberate arc. In the near term, your focus will be the design system: consolidating, architecting, and elevating it into something stable, distinct, and built to scale with us. As that foundation matures, we expect this role to evolve into ownership of a product area, where you'll carry the same craft and judgment forward into shipping product day to day. We're looking for someone genuinely excited by both halves.

You will collaborate closely with product, engineering, and leadership in a fast‑paced environment to make the system the clear, trusted foundation for how we design and build. Join our small, creative team of designers, engineers, and product enthusiasts dedicated to thoughtfully bridging the human‑machine divide. We're doing it right, sweating the details, and we're in it together.

This role is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

What You’ll Do

• Architect for scale: Define the token architecture, component structure, and theming model (light, dark, and beyond) that let the system flex across products and surfaces without forking or drifting.

• Own governance, not just files: Establish the standards, documentation, and contribution model that keep the system coherent as more designers and engineers touch it. Be the clear, decisive voice when tradeoffs get contentious.

• Partner deeply with engineering: Work hand‑in‑hand with frontend engineers to ensure the system is implemented faithfully and effectively.

• Elevate craft everywhere: Bring meticulous visual and interaction craft, including motion and micro‑interaction detail, to every component and pattern so the system doesn't just function, it feels intentional and distinctly Tavus. “Good enough” isn’t.

• Drive adoption: Make the system easier to use than not using it. Build the artifacts, documentation, and relationships that get other designers, engineers, and marketers to reach for the system first.

Who You Are

• An indefatigable visual designer, with an exceptional, well‑trained eye for typography, color, layout, and detail, plus real motion design chops.

• A genuinely capable product designer, with 6+ years of experience and solid UX judgment. You understand user flows, interaction patterns, and product tradeoffs well enough that your systems hold up with elegance under real product pressure.

• Experienced building and governing design systems at scale. You can point to a system you've architected and evolved, not just contributed to, with bonus points for work both within an existing component framework as well as from‑scratch builds.

• Original, not just tasteful. We're not looking for someone who can recognize good design when they see it; we're looking for someone who can produce something distinct that hasn't been seen before. If your portfolio could pass for a dozen other SaaS products, this isn't the right fit. We'll ask you to walk us through specific decisions and the reasoning behind them, and the results those decisions yielded.

• Principled and able to defend it. You’re especially adept at articulating why a decision is correct. You push back on your own instincts as readily as you push back on others.

• Decisive in ambiguity: You don't need permission to make a call. When a system decision has no clean answer, you weigh the tradeoffs, make a defensible choice, and move, while staying meticulous about the details within that decision.

• Technically fluent: You're comfortable working close to code: reviewing implementation, catching and stopping drift between design and build, and speaking the language of the engineers who ship your system.

• Built for startup pace: You can operate with minimal specs and shifting priorities, protecting the highest quality bar while moving fast.

Benefits & Culture

When you join Tavus, you’re joining a diverse and supportive team. Our work is driven by our people, and our success is shared by all. This position has a flexible work schedule, unlimited PTO, competitive healthcare, and gear stipends, as well as plenty of fun. At the end of the day, we want Tavus to be a place for you to learn, directly drive impact, and work with a team you love.

To learn more about our team culture and benefits, check out our hiring page.

Tavus is growing fast, and we’d like you to grow with us. If you’re excited to get your hands dirty and help make machines more human, drop your resume and we’ll be in touch.

We are not looking for cultural fits, we are looking for culture creators. Diversity is what drives our success – it’s at the core of how we hire, communicate, and work. We are inclusive to all and combine our diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and perspectives to build the best experiences for our clients.