Principal UX Designer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 5, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 16, 2026.
About Us
Familiar Machines & Magic (FM&M) is building the Physical AI platform for human connection, beginning with Familiars - physically embodied AI systems designed to form long-term, emotionally intelligent relationships with people. Our mission is to create artificial life to build a more caring world.
Founded by industry leaders from iRobot, Outrider, and Amazon, our team has collectively deployed over 50 million consumer robots worldwide and led advances in navigation, machine learning, and human-robot interaction.
Familiar Machines & Magic is building a mission-driven team of high performers, anchored in our unique Culture Principles and Ways of Working.
Position Overview
We’re looking for a Principal User Experience (UX) Designer to join our growing team and help bring the Familiar experience to life. You will lead UX across our app, web, and on-product experiences, creating a cohesive system that can be built and shipped.
You will think beyond individual features and interfaces to how the experience works as a whole - across digital and physical touchpoints, everyday interactions, system states, and moments when things don’t go as planned. When a Familiar can’t charge, for example, you will have considered how the issue is communicated, how the system responds, how it reaches FM&M, and how it ultimately gets resolved for the customer. This is our Experience Obsessed culture principle in practice: an end-to-end customer experience built with a systems mindset.
The right candidate brings deep digital UX expertise, strong systems thinking, and significant experience shipping products that bridge digital and physical experiences. As a hands-on design leader, you can identify and frame complex UX problems, interpret abstract experiential and behavioral intent, and create cohesive experiences people can understand and trust. You are equally comfortable setting direction and working through the details, highly collaborative, able to drive alignment across disciplines and external partners, and you thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic, culture-forward environment.
This role reports to Ira Renfrew, Co-Founder, Chief People & Product Officer.
What You'll Do | Responsibilities & Scope
You will lead the translation of the Familiar’s established product vision, behaviors, and use cases into a cohesive, launch-ready customer experience across the app, on-product interfaces, and supporting digital touchpoints.
Define interaction patterns, system states, and frameworks that create a cohesive and scalable experience across the Familiar ecosystem, from system-level definition through detailed execution.
Establish the UX visual language and design system across app, web, and the Familiar's embodied behaviors and expressions, translating FM&M’s brand and the Familiar’s identity into a coherent language for how the system communicates with people.
Partner across Design, Product Management, AI, Software, Hardware, and User Experience Research (UXR) to translate the Familiar’s intended character, personality, and behaviors into shippable experiences, while driving cross-system alignment through development, validation, and launch.
Design for the realities of a physical AI product - including everyday interactions, system feedback, edge cases, failure, recovery, and support.
Stay hands-on throughout development, using prototyping to explore, validate, and guide the experience through implementation while ensuring design quality and intent are carried through to launch.
Partner with Product Management, Research, and Engineering to define how we evaluate the experience in-market and evolve interactions based on behavioral data, customer feedback, and advances in system capability.
What You'll Bring | Experience, Expertise & Qualifications
Extensive experience leading complex UX products from definition through development, launch and continued evolution.
Strong visual sense and intuition, with the judgment to create experiences that feel refined and distinctive while remaining pragmatic and appropriate to each platform.
Deep digital UX expertise spanning system-level experience design and detailed interaction design.
Robust experience partnering with UX researchers and participating in diverse forms of user research.
Strong design judgment and visual sensibility, informed by a sophisticated understanding of the evolving digital landscape and what makes experiences feel refined, distinctive, and appropriate to each platform.
Significant experience shipping consumer products that bridge software and physical experiences; connected devices, robotics, wearables, gaming, automotive, smart home, consumer electronics, or adjacent categories are especially relevant.
Deep experience establishing cohesive UX patterns and frameworks across multiple platforms and surfaces, beyond individual features while preserving the intent and quality of the experience
Strong leadership, judgment, and influence across multidisciplinary teams, with a clear UX point of view, and the ability to set direction, drive alignment, and set direction, drive alignment and elevate product quality while navigating complex product, design, and technical tradeoffs.
Fluency with emerging technologies, including AI, and a thoughtful perspective on their role in advancing UX design, prototyping, and product development.
How You'll Succeed | Mindset, Judgment & Ways of Working
See the whole system while caring deeply about the details people ultimately experience.
Bring clarity and structure to ambiguous, rapidly evolving problems.
Balance creative ambition with technical realities, product priorities, schedule, and business needs.
Lead through expertise, collaboration, and influence while remaining deeply hands-on.
Be energized by the challenge of turning emerging technology into experiences that feel intuitive, thoughtful, and emotionally meaningful to people.