Senior Software Design Lead – AI Systems Architect (Hybrid)

Ideo; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Health benefits

401K with employer contribution

Parental leave

Job summary

IDEO San Francisco is seeking a Senior Software Design Lead who will architect human and technical systems for digital products and AI experiences, build prototypes, and be the trusted technical voice for CTOs. You will translate product insights into scalable software architecture and guide teams through data, APIs and agentic infrastructure.

The role combines hands-on prototyping with strategic leadership, shaping proposals, and collaborating with product, design and data teams to deliver

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.
• Deep software fundamentals: systems design, data modeling, APIs, and tradeoffs around performance and security.
• Hands-on building with LLMs and advanced prototyping with real data and integrations.
• Experience working with product, design and data; using prototypes to think.
• Strong communication and storytelling: diagrams, maps and presentations for executives.

Responsibilities

• Work with product designers, strategists and researchers on 8–12+ week engagements, translating insights into architecture.
• Build early prototypes with real data, models and integrations to learn quickly.
• Advise client executives and engineering teams on tech stack choices, build-vs-buy, APIs and LLMs feasibility.
• Design system behavior of agents and systems, including guardrails and legibility for humans and machines.
• Raise the craft bar inside IDEO by creating starter kits and coaching designers who prototype in code.
• Shape proposals and scope technical work in business development.

Skills

Software engineering

System design

Leadership

Data modeling

APIs

LLMs

Prototyping

Communication

Tools

TypeScript

React

Python

Node.js

AWS

GCP

Job description

IDEO San Francisco is seeking a Senior Software Design Lead who will architect human and technical systems for digital products and AI experiences, build prototypes, and be the trusted technical voice for CTOs. You will translate product insights into scalable software architecture and guide teams through data, APIs and agentic infrastructure.

The role combines hands-on prototyping with strategic leadership, shaping proposals, and collaborating with product, design and data teams to deliver