Founding Product Designer

About the Role

A well-funded, early-stage AI/ML startup in the mechanical engineering space is hiring its Founding Product Designer to define the UX of an agentic platform that helps mechanical engineers delegate CAD, CAE, and PLM workflows. This is a rare opportunity to own design end-to-end — from the agent interaction layer to the desktop app shell and IT/admin surfaces — and to set the design bar from day one at a company building for enterprise hardware teams.

What You'll Do

• Own UX end-to-end across agent, desktop, and IT/admin surfaces, setting the overall design standard.
• Define agent interaction patterns: plan review, step-level approvals, scope boundaries, and agent-to-human handoffs.
• Design observability and verification surfaces — diffs, plans, reasoning traces, audit history — so engineers can trust and validate agent actions.
• Map user stories across engineering workflows (DFM review, drawing generation, mold-flow setup, PLM check-in) and design for stakeholders and failure modes.
• Own the desktop app shell: information architecture, navigation, panel and command surfaces.
• Design integration experiences for CAD/CAE/PLM tools that respect established mental models without inheriting legacy UI debt.
• Design IT-facing surfaces: installers, activation flows, admin consoles, deployment status, and enterprise error handling.
• Run and partner on research with PM and engineering, including customer calls and usability sessions with Fortune 100 users.
• Build a design system from scratch — tokens, components, motion, density, and accessibility — and define what