Senior Software Design Lead — AI Systems Architect

JDS Sports; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401K with employer contribution

Parental leave

Home office stipend

Commuter reimbursement

Flexible work

Paid holidays

Annual education stipend

Job summary

IDEO San Francisco is seeking a Senior Software Design Lead to architect the human and technical systems behind digital products and AI experiences, and to build prototypes that behave like production software. You will be the technical voice trusted by client CTOs and help shape every project from concept to implementation.

In this role you will collaborate with product designers and researchers on 8–12+ week engagements, craft data models, APIs, and the agentic layer, and design how agents and

Qualifications

• 6-8+ years as a software engineer shipping production software.
• 1-2+ years as an engineering lead or solutions architect: scoping, estimating and planning projects.
• Deep software fundamentals, including systems design, data modeling, APIs, and tradeoffs around performance, security and scale, plus fluency in a modern stack (TypeScript, React, Python, Node; AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Hands-on building with LLMs (tool use, agents, retrieval, evals) and advanced prototyping.
• A track record of working closely with product, design and data, plus curiosity about people and a desire to learn how the craft of software intersects with product and design.
• Strong communication and storytelling: architecture diagrams, system maps and presentations that make technical recommendations clear and persuasive to executives and engineering leaders.

Responsibilities

• Work with product designers, product strategists and design researchers on 8–12+ week digital product engagements that may span from product vision and strategy to full end-to-end build.
• Build early prototypes with real data, real models and real integrations, so we learn quickly and lower the risk of big bets.
• Advise client executives and engineering teams on tech stack choices, build-vs-buy, evaluating APIs and LLMs, and feasibility.
• Design how agents and systems behave on a human's behalf, including guardrails, failure states and how the system stays legible to both people and machines.
• Raise the craft bar inside IDEO. Create reusable starter kits and toolkits so teams stop building from scratch, and coach designers who prototype in code.
• Help shape proposals and scope technical work in business development.

Skills

Software engineering

Engineering lead

Systems design

APIs & data modeling

LLMs prototyping

Communication & storytelling

Frontend stack (TypeScript/React)

Tools

Figma

Job description

IDEO San Francisco is seeking a Senior Software Design Lead to architect the human and technical systems behind digital products and AI experiences, and to build prototypes that behave like production software. You will be the technical voice trusted by client CTOs and help shape every project from concept to implementation.

In this role you will collaborate with product designers and researchers on 8–12+ week engagements, craft data models, APIs, and the agentic layer, and design how agents and