Principal AI UI Architect

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Principal AI UI Architect Company: Freshworks Location: San Mateo, California, United States / Bellevue, Washington, United States Job Type: Full-time Category: Engineering - Frontend / Product Development Date Posted: August 20, 2025 Experience Level: 10+ years

🚀 Role Summary

• Lead the frontend architecture and developer experience for Freshworks' AI Agentic Platform, focusing on intuitive visual tools for building, testing, and deploying AI agents.
• Architect complex, interactive UIs for AI workflows, including visual editors, debugging environments, and prompt management systems.
• Drive the design of low-code/no-code interfaces that enable users to chain reasoning agents, integrate tools, and orchestrate multi-agent workflows seamlessly.
• Champion user simulation and outcome-driven testing frameworks within the UI to enhance agent effectiveness and facilitate A/B testing of strategies and prompts.

📝 Enhancement Note: While this role is not in a traditional "Operations" function (like Sales Ops or Rev Ops), its focus on developer experience, platform architecture, and building tooling for AI agents positions it within the broader ecosystem of product and engineering operations. The skills required for architecting and optimizing these developer platforms align with the process-driven and efficiency-focused mindset of operations professionals.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Define and implement the UI architecture for a visual agent-building environment, supporting both reasoning-driven and deterministic agent workflows.
• Design low-code/no-code interfaces for chaining reasoning agents (e.g., LangGraph), integrating various tools, and orchestrating complex multi-agent workflows.
• Build robust visual debugging and testing environments for AI agents, enabling real-time state visualization and detailed reasoning trace playback.
• Create sophisticated prompt and knowledge management UIs that support versioning, branching, and side-by-side evaluation capabilities for enhanced AI model development.
• Architect user simulation frameworks within the UI to accurately emulate diverse personas, intents, and edge cases for comprehensive agent testing.
• Enable scenario-driven testing methodologies to measure agent effectiveness in achieving specific business outcomes and facilitate A/B testing of strategies, prompts, and workflows.
• Integrate with AI evaluation APIs, such as LangSmith, to provide developers with critical visibility into success metrics and regression testing results.
• Develop multi-dialog authoring experiences to enable the creation of AI assistants capable of handling parallel flows, context switching, and hierarchical dialog trees.
• Support channel-agnostic assistant design by building connectors for various communication channels, including web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, email, IVR/voice, and custom integrations.
• Provide visual voice design tools, including SSML tuning and call flow simulation, specifically for telephony and voice-based AI use cases.
• Architect agent runtime monitoring dashboards that integrate seamlessly with backend telemetry, including logs, traces, and reasoning paths.
• Enable step-by-step reasoning visualization for debugging both deterministic and probabilistic AI agents, offering deep insights into their decision-making processes.
• Design tool usage dashboards to provide clear visibility into which APIs or skills agents invoke and their subsequent outcomes.
• Build modular, extensible UI frameworks that integrate effectively with backend agent orchestration services.
• Ensure real-time collaboration features (e.g., multi-user editing, shared test sessions) are implemented to support distributed enterprise teams.
• Enforce enterprise-grade security measures, including RBAC, SSO/OAuth, and secure tenant isolation, within the UI layer.
• Define the technical strategy and roadmap for the UI layer in close alignment with platform and backend architects.
• Partner closely with backend engineers, ML teams, and product managers to deliver cohesive and integrated user experiences.
• Mentor frontend and UI engineers, establishing best practices for performance, accessibility, and developer tooling.
• Advocate for and drive an intuitive developer experience (DX) for building, testing, and deploying AI agents.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities highlight a strong focus on building developer tools and platforms, which requires a deep understanding of workflow automation, process optimization, and user experience design, mirroring many core tenets of operations roles. The emphasis on testing, debugging, and efficiency directly translates to operational excellence in a software development context.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Experience:

• 10+ years of progressive experience in UI architecture and frontend engineering, specifically for enterprise SaaS products or developer platforms.
• Proven track record of designing and implementing complex, interactive UIs for AI tools, workflow builders, or sophisticated developer environments.
• Demonstrated experience in building visual editors, such as drag-and-drop builders or graph-based workflow interfaces, and associated debugging tools.
• Substantial background in multi-channel assistant design, encompassing chat, voice/IVR, and various messaging applications, with a strong grasp of conversational UX principles.
• Experience with enterprise-grade security measures in UI platforms, including SSO/OAuth, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), and multi-tenant UI design.

Required Skills:

• UI Architecture & Frontend Engineering: Deep expertise in designing scalable, maintainable, and performant frontend architectures for complex applications.
• React & TypeScript: Proficiency in React, including modern frameworks like Next.js, and strong command of TypeScript for robust application development.
• WebSockets & State Management: Experience with real-time communication protocols like WebSockets and advanced state management techniques for dynamic UIs.
• Agentic AI & LLM Workflows: Strong understanding of agentic AI concepts, Large Language Models (LLMs), and their application in building intelligent workflows.
• Visual Editors & Debugging Tools: Proven ability to build intuitive visual editors and effective debugging tools for complex systems.
• Multi-Channel Design & Conversational UX: Expertise in designing user experiences for diverse communication channels and a solid foundation in conversational UX principles.
• Real-Time Collaboration: Experience implementing real-time collaborative features in web applications.
• AI Observability & Test-Driven AI: Familiarity with AI observability concepts, visualizing agent traces, and implementing test-driven development for AI systems.
• Enterprise Security: In-depth knowledge of implementing enterprise security best practices within UI platforms.

Preferred Skills:

• Prior experience architecting low-code/no-code AI tooling UIs.
• Experience with voice UI frameworks, SSML, telephony APIs, and IVR design principles.
• Familiarity with graph-based agent orchestration visualization tools like LangGraph.
• Contributions to open-source AI development communities or agentic UI frameworks.
• Understanding of agent evaluation frameworks (e.g., LangSmith) and their integration into visual development workflows.
• Experience in a startup environment focused on building highly usable and rapidly evolving AI development platforms.

📝 Enhancement Note: The required skills emphasize technical leadership in frontend development, particularly within the AI and developer tooling space. This requires a blend of deep technical expertise and an understanding of how to create efficient, user-friendly platforms, which is akin to the operational focus on system efficiency and user adoption.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Showcase complex UI architectures and frontend systems you have designed and led.
• Provide examples of interactive UIs for developer tools, workflow builders, or AI platforms, demonstrating your ability to handle intricate user flows and data visualizations.
• Highlight projects where you implemented real-time collaboration features or visual debugging tools.
• Include case studies demonstrating your approach to architecting for scalability, performance, and enterprise security within frontend applications.
• Present examples of prompt management or knowledge base UIs, showcasing versioning, evaluation, and user-friendly design.

Process Documentation:

• Demonstrate your process for translating complex AI agentic workflows into intuitive visual interfaces.
• Document your approach to designing and implementing testing and debugging frameworks for AI agents, emphasizing efficiency and clarity.
• Illustrate your methodology for integrating various data sources and telemetry into real-time monitoring dashboards for AI agents.
• Explain your process for ensuring accessibility, performance, and maintainability in large-scale frontend applications.

📝 Enhancement Note: For this role, a portfolio is crucial to demonstrate practical application of architectural skills. The emphasis on process and system design, especially for developer tools, aligns with operations' focus on building efficient and scalable systems. Demonstrating a structured approach to problem-solving and system implementation is key.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: $260,500 - $374,440 annually.

• Note: This range is based on the provided additional information. Compensation is influenced by factors such as location, experience, job-related skills, and overall level. Bonus and/or equity may be offered in addition to the base salary.
• Research Methodology: The provided salary range is used directly. For roles in San Mateo, CA and Bellevue, WA, this range is competitive for senior architect positions in the tech industry, particularly those with specialized AI and UI architecture experience.

Benefits:

• Comprehensive health coverage: Dental, Medical, and Vision Insurance.
• Income protection: Disability and Life Insurance.
• Ownership and investment: Equity and Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).
• Work-life balance: Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO), Flexible Spending accounts.
• Perks: Commuter benefits and Wellness benefits.
• Family support: Adoption Leave and Parental Leave benefits.

Working Hours:

• Standard full-time employment, typically around 40 hours per week. While specific hours are not detailed, the hybrid nature suggests a structured work week with flexibility around core collaboration days.

📝 Enhancement Note: The provided salary range is quite high, reflecting the senior and specialized nature of this Principal Architect role. The extensive benefits package indicates a company that invests in its employees' well-being and long-term engagement, which is a positive signal for career stability and growth.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Software / Customer Experience (CX) & Employee Experience (EX) Software. Freshworks operates in the competitive SaaS market, focusing on simplifying business software and enhancing customer and employee interactions through AI-powered solutions. Company Size: Over 4,500 employees globally. This indicates a well-established, mid-to-large-sized tech company with the resources to support significant R&D and global operations. Founded: Freshworks was founded with a vision to create uncomplicated service software. Its history likely involves a growth trajectory from a startup to a significant global player, emphasizing innovation and customer-centricity.

Team Structure:

• The Principal AI UI Architect will likely be part of a larger engineering or product development organization.
• They will collaborate closely with backend engineering teams, Machine Learning (ML) specialists, and product managers.
• This role involves leadership and mentoring of frontend/UI engineers, suggesting a team structure where architectural guidance and best practices are disseminated.
• Cross-functional collaboration is a key aspect, requiring strong partnerships across different technical and product disciplines.

Methodology:

• Data Analysis & Insights: The role implies a data-driven approach to UI design and optimization, leveraging user feedback, performance metrics, and AI evaluation results to inform decisions.
• Workflow Planning & Optimization: A core responsibility is to design and optimize workflows within the AI Agentic Platform, making complex AI development processes more efficient and accessible.
• Automation & Efficiency Practices: The focus on low-code/no-code interfaces and AI tooling inherently drives automation and efficiency for developers building AI agents.

Company Website: https://www.freshworks.com/

📝 Enhancement Note: Freshworks' emphasis on "uncomplicated service software" and "people-first approach to AI" suggests a culture that values user experience, efficiency, and innovation. For an operations-minded individual, this translates to an environment where process improvement and system optimization are likely highly valued.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: Principal Architect. This is a senior individual contributor role with significant technical leadership responsibilities. It signifies deep expertise and the ability to influence technical direction across a product or platform. In an operations context, this level implies strategic ownership of critical systems and processes. Reporting Structure: While not explicitly stated, a Principal Architect typically reports to an Engineering Director or VP of Engineering. They often lead or mentor other engineers and architects within their domain. Operations Impact: The role's impact is on the developer experience and efficiency of building AI agents. By creating superior tools and platforms, this role directly influences the speed, quality, and cost-effectiveness of AI development within Freshworks and for its customers, mirroring the GTM operations focus on revenue enablement and efficiency.

Growth Opportunities:

• Technical Leadership: Opportunity to shape the future of AI development tooling and establish architectural patterns for agentic platforms.
• Domain Expertise: Deepen expertise in AI, LLMs, conversational UX, and complex developer platform design.
• Mentorship & Management: Potential to grow into a formal management role or continue as a principal individual contributor with broader architectural scope.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Influence product strategy and technical direction by collaborating across engineering, product, and ML teams.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role offers significant growth potential for individuals who excel in technical leadership and platform design. The "principal" title suggests a path towards becoming a subject matter expert and a key decision-maker within the engineering organization, aligning with career progression in operations leadership.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: Hybrid. This role requires an in-office presence three days per week (Tuesday - Thursday) in either San Mateo, CA, or Bellevue, WA. The remaining two days offer flexibility for remote work. Office Location(s): San Mateo, California, United States and Bellevue, Washington, United States. Workspace Context:

• The hybrid model fosters a balance between focused individual work and collaborative team interaction.
• The office environment is likely designed to facilitate collaboration, brainstorming, and team-building activities on designated in-office days.
• Access to modern technology and development tools is expected, supporting efficient frontend development and AI platform building.
• Opportunities for interaction with diverse teams (engineering, product, ML) will be frequent, promoting a rich learning and collaborative environment. Work Schedule: A standard full-time work schedule is expected, with the hybrid arrangement providing flexibility. The emphasis is on delivering results and meeting project milestones, with core collaboration days typically scheduled for Tuesdays through Thursdays.

📝 Enhancement Note: The hybrid work arrangement is common in the tech industry and reflects a modern approach to balancing productivity and employee well-being. For operations professionals, this structure implies a need for discipline in managing time and communication across different work settings.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A recruiter or hiring manager will review your application, focusing on your experience in UI architecture, frontend development, and AI tooling.
• Technical Interviews: Expect multiple rounds of technical interviews covering:
  • Frontend architecture design and principles.
  • Deep dives into React, TypeScript, state management, and WebSockets.
  • Scenario-based questions on building complex UIs, visual editors, and debugging tools.
  • Discussions on agentic AI concepts, LLM workflows, and conversational UX.
  • Evaluation of your experience with enterprise security and real-time collaboration.
• System Design/Architecture Challenge: A detailed session focusing on how you would architect specific components of the AI Agentic Platform, potentially involving whiteboarding or a take-home exercise.
• Leadership & Collaboration Interview: Assessment of your leadership capabilities, mentoring experience, and ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Final Round: Often with senior leadership to assess cultural fit, strategic thinking, and overall alignment with the company vision.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Curate Select Projects: Focus on projects that best demonstrate your UI architecture skills, experience with developer tools, AI platforms, or complex interactive UIs.
• Highlight Architectural Decisions: For each project, clearly articulate the architectural challenges, your design choices, and the rationale behind them. Explain why you chose specific technologies or patterns.
• Showcase Process & Methodology: Detail your approach to development, including how you handle requirements, design iterations, testing, and collaboration. Emphasize efficiency and scalability.
• Quantify Impact: Wherever possible, use metrics to demonstrate the success of your work. For example, improvements in developer productivity, reduction in debugging time, or user adoption rates of the tools you built.
• Prepare for Walkthroughs: Be ready to walk through your portfolio items, explaining the context, your role, the technical details, and the outcomes.

Challenge Preparation:

• System Design: Practice designing complex UIs for developer platforms, focusing on modularity, scalability, and real-time features. Consider how to represent complex data structures and workflows visually.
• AI Concepts: Refresh your understanding of LLMs, agentic workflows (e.g., LangGraph), prompt engineering, and AI observability.
• Frontend Best Practices: Be prepared to discuss best practices in React performance optimization, accessibility, security, and maintainability.
• Communication: Practice articulating your technical vision clearly and concisely, especially when explaining complex architectural concepts to both technical and potentially less technical audiences.

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview process for a Principal Architect is rigorous and heavily weighted towards system design and architectural thinking. A well-prepared portfolio that demonstrates not just technical skill but also a structured, operations-like approach to building robust systems will be crucial.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Frontend Frameworks: React (with Next.js strongly implied).
• Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript.
• Real-time Communication: WebSockets.
• State Management: Modern state management libraries (e.g., Redux, Zustand, Jotai).
• UI/UX Design Tools: Figma, Sketch, or similar for prototyping and collaboration.
• Version Control: Git.
• Build Tools: Webpack, Vite, or similar.

Analytics & Reporting:

• AI Evaluation Frameworks: LangSmith or similar APIs for agent performance tracking and success metrics.
• Observability Tools: Tools for monitoring application performance, logs, and traces (e.g., Datadog, Sentry, OpenTelemetry).
• Analytics Platforms: Tools for user behavior analytics and A/B testing within the platform.

CRM & Automation:

• While not directly managing CRM systems, understanding how the AI Agentic Platform might integrate with customer data platforms or workflow automation tools used in sales/service operations could be beneficial.
• Integration Tools: Experience with APIs and building integrations between different software systems.

📝 Enhancement Note: Proficiency in the specified frontend technologies is non-negotiable. Familiarity with AI evaluation and observability tools demonstrates an understanding of the operational metrics and performance monitoring essential for AI systems, aligning with an operations mindset.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• Efficiency & Productivity: A drive to create tools that make developers more efficient and productive in building AI agents.
• User-Centricity (Developer Focus): Prioritizing the developer's experience (DX) to ensure the platform is intuitive, powerful, and easy to use.
• Innovation & Problem-Solving: Embracing challenges in AI development and finding creative solutions through thoughtful UI/UX architecture.
• Collaboration & Communication: Valuing teamwork and open communication across different engineering disciplines and product teams.
• Quality & Reliability: Commitment to building robust, secure, and high-performance frontend systems.

Collaboration Style:

• Cross-functional Integration: Actively collaborating with backend engineers, ML teams, and product managers to ensure seamless integration of frontend and backend functionalities.
• Process Review & Feedback: Participating in code reviews, design discussions, and providing constructive feedback to peers and mentees.
• Knowledge Sharing: Sharing expertise on frontend best practices, AI tooling, and architectural patterns within the team and broader engineering organization.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on developer experience, efficiency, and collaborative problem-solving aligns closely with the core values found in successful operations teams, particularly those focused on enabling other departments through technology and process improvements.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Complexity of AI Workflows: Translating intricate, multi-step AI reasoning and agent orchestration into user-friendly visual interfaces.
• Real-time Collaboration at Scale: Ensuring seamless and performant real-time collaboration for distributed teams working on complex AI agent configurations.
• Balancing Low-Code and Advanced Customization: Designing a UI that caters to both users who prefer low-code solutions and those who require deeper control and customization.
• Rapidly Evolving AI Landscape: Keeping pace with the fast-changing field of AI, LLMs, and agentic development to ensure the platform remains cutting-edge.
• Enterprise Security Integration: Implementing robust security measures without compromising usability or performance.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Deep Dive into AI/ML: Gaining in-depth knowledge of agentic AI architectures, LLM capabilities, and ML operations (MLOps) from a frontend perspective.
• Advanced UI/UX Techniques: Mastering cutting-edge UI patterns for complex applications, developer tools, and real-time collaborative environments.
• Architectural Leadership: Developing skills in technical strategy, roadmap definition, and influencing engineering direction.
• Mentorship: Opportunity to mentor junior engineers and contribute to the growth of the frontend engineering team.
• Industry Exposure: Engaging with the broader AI development community and staying abreast of emerging trends and technologies.

📝 Enhancement Note: The challenges presented require adaptability, strong problem-solving skills, and a continuous learning mindset, all of which are critical for thriving in operations roles that often deal with evolving systems and processes.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "Describe a complex developer platform or workflow tool you architected. What were the key architectural decisions, and what was the impact on developer productivity or efficiency?"
  • Preparation: Focus on a project where you designed a system that streamlined a complex process. Highlight your role in defining the architecture, the technologies chosen, and quantifiable improvements. Emphasize how your design facilitated ease of use and efficiency.
• "How would you design a visual interface for chaining LLM agents and integrating custom tools? Consider aspects like user experience, extensibility, and debugging."
  • Preparation: Think about graph-based UIs, drag-and-drop functionality, intuitive configuration panels, and real-time feedback mechanisms. Discuss how you'd handle error states and provide clear debugging information.
• "Imagine you need to build a real-time collaborative editor for AI prompts. What are the key technical challenges, and how would you address them using WebSockets and modern state management?"
  • Preparation: Discuss challenges like conflict resolution, state synchronization, performance optimization for concurrent users, and efficient data patching. Explain your approach to managing shared state and ensuring consistency.
• "How do you ensure enterprise-grade security within a complex frontend application, especially one dealing with potentially sensitive AI configurations or data?"
  • Preparation: Detail your understanding of RBAC, SSO/OAuth integration, secure data handling (e.g., avoiding client-side storage of secrets), and tenant isolation principles in multi-tenant applications.
• "How do you balance the needs of users who prefer low-code interfaces with those who require deep customization and control over their AI agent development?"
  • Preparation: Discuss modular UI design, progressive disclosure of complexity, and providing extensibility points for advanced users without overwhelming beginners.

Company & Culture Questions:

• "What interests you about Freshworks and our mission to simplify business software with AI?"
  • Preparation: Research Freshworks' products, recent news, and company values. Connect your passion for building user-friendly, efficient tools to their mission.
• "How do you approach mentoring junior engineers and establishing best practices within a frontend team?"
  • Preparation: Share examples of your mentoring style, how you provide constructive feedback, and your methods for promoting code quality, performance, and knowledge sharing.
• "Describe a time you had to collaborate closely with backend engineers or ML teams to deliver a complex feature. What were the challenges, and how did you ensure a successful outcome?"
  • Preparation: Focus on communication strategies, technical alignment, and problem-solving approaches that facilitated cross-functional success.

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Storytelling: Frame your portfolio pieces as stories, detailing the problem, your solution (architecture and design), and the impact.
• Visual Clarity: Use clear diagrams and screenshots to illustrate your architectural concepts and UI designs.
• Technical Depth: Be prepared to discuss the "why" behind your technical choices, demonstrating a deep understanding of trade-offs.
• Focus on Efficiency: Highlight how your work improved efficiency, reduced complexity, or streamlined processes for users (developers in this case).
• Conciseness: Present your most impactful work efficiently, respecting the interviewer's time.

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview preparation should focus on demonstrating not just technical prowess but also strategic thinking, problem-solving methodologies, and an understanding of how to build efficient, scalable systems – all hallmarks of strong operational capabilities.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Principal AI UI Architect position:

• Submit your application through the provided job link on SmartRecruiters.
• Portfolio Customization: Tailor your resume and portfolio to highlight your experience in UI architecture, complex frontend systems, developer platforms, and AI tooling. Showcase projects demonstrating visual editors, debugging tools, and real-time collaboration.
• Resume Optimization: Ensure your resume uses keywords from the job description, such as "UI Architecture," "Frontend Engineering," "React," "TypeScript," "Agentic AI," "Workflow Builders," and "Developer Experience." Quantify your achievements with metrics related to efficiency, scalability, or user impact.
• Interview Preparation: Thoroughly prepare for technical interviews by reviewing core frontend concepts, AI/LLM basics, and system design principles. Practice articulating your architectural decisions and problem-solving approaches. Rehearse your portfolio walkthroughs.
• Company Research: Gain a solid understanding of Freshworks' products, mission, and culture. Prepare thoughtful questions to ask the interviewer about the team, the AI Agentic Platform's roadmap, and the company's approach to developer experience.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.