Product Designer

Please read first

• This is a full-time, in-person role based in San Francisco (Presidio) - we work from the office 5 days a week.

• You must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate before starting.

• We require US work authorization, but are open to O-1 or J-1 visa sponsorship for exceptional candidates.

About Sauna by Wordware

Most AI products hand you a coworker on day one and hope you trust it. Sauna is the coworker you raise: it starts by learning how you work, earns autonomy task by task, and ends up running hours of work on its own while you keep taste, review, and the final say. Wordware is the ~20-person team behind it, backed by Spark Capital, Felicis, and Y Combinator with a $30M seed, the largest in YC history. We build from a San Francisco office in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, and we work absurdly hard because we can see and feel the outcome every day.

About the Role:

We're looking for a Product Designer to reimagine how humans collaborate with AI. You'll be designing the interfaces (not just screens) that make collaborating with AI and building AI assistants feel as intuitive as having a conversation with a friend, colleague or employee. This role requires someone who can navigate extreme complexity while maintaining an unwavering focus on delight and the experience for the user. You'll work directly with our engineers to create design patterns that don't exist yet, shaping how millions will build and collaborate with AI. As an early team member, you'll have an outsized impact on our product's evolution and report to our CEO and Head of Product.

Heads-up: while we don't use seniority titles at Wordware, this role is intended for designers with 5+ years of experience who are already operating at a Senior, Staff, or Principal level.

What You'll Do:

• Design end-to-end user flows for AI agent creation, from natural language input to deployment

• Design across platforms: you should be comfortable working on mobile interfaces, desktop, and responsive web

• Develop interaction patterns for real-time feedback where the assistant comes alive in the experience, while keeping the underlying mechanics quietly out of the way

• Build and maintain our design system, ensuring consistency across rapidly evolving product surfaces

• Prototype novel interfaces using real AI models to validate design decisions with actual system behavior and real users

• Partner with engineering to ensure designs perform beautifully at scale

• Conduct user research to uncover unmet needs and opportunities

• Design for progressive disclosure, revealing complexity only when users need it

• Create motion and micro-interactions that make synchronous and asynchronous AI processes feel responsive

• Influence product strategy by identifying opportunities through design exploration

Who You Are:

Minimum:

This role demands someone who thrives at the intersection of design craft and technical systems.

• Have designed complex products that achieved both usability and adoption goals

• Demonstrate deep understanding of information and interaction architecture for multi-platform systems

• Show expertise in interaction design, including keyboard-first interfaces

• Bring strong visual design skills with proven ability to create cohesive, scalable design systems

• Excel at prototyping, from paper sketches to high-fidelity interactive demos (bonus: the closer to real code the better)

• Understand interface development concepts and limitations for mobile and web to design feasible solutions

• Communicate design rationale effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Bonus (but not required):

• Built products using LLMs or other AI technologies as a designer or builder

• Digital native who leverages AI as a creative partner, using generative models and AI tools as a real competitive advantage in your workflow

• Thrive in an AI-native environment where pushing boundaries with these tools is part of the daily practice

• Motion design skills for creating fluid, responsive interfaces

• Code proficiency enabling you to build functional prototypes or contribute to implementation

• Experience with design engineering, bridging design and development workflows

• Track record of designing for uncertainty and evolving system capabilities

• Background in conversational UI or natural language interfaces

• Published writing or talks about product design

• Experience designing for both technical and non-technical users in the same product

Compensation & Benefits:

Base salary: $140K-$220K + meaningful early-stage equity + health, dental, 401(k), considerable PTO, gym budget, lunch.

The Process:

We keep our process simple. Exceptional candidates go from first touch to offer within 2 weeks.

1. Application: Submit your resume and answer a few short questions.

2. 15-minute intro call: Quick check to align on location, motivation, and logistics. If it's a go, we move fast from here.

3. Portfolio review & design exercise: Walk through your work, then work through a real Wordware design problem with us.

4. Final conversation: We answer your questions and scope out the work trial.

5. Work trial: Paid, in person, usually a few days to two weeks. You work on a real project with us. See how we work, see if it fits, both sides.