Staff Product Designer

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Staff Product Designer

Company: Runlayer

Location: United States

Job Type: FULL_TIME

Category: Product Design / GTM Operations

Date Posted: 2026-04-03

Experience Level: 6+ Years

Remote Status: Fully Remote

🚀 Role Summary

• Drive the end-to-end product design process for complex AI systems, focusing on creating intuitive and accessible interfaces for enterprise users.

• Design robust governance and security experiences, balancing powerful controls with user-friendly usability to ensure safe AI adoption.

• Develop and maintain a comprehensive design system, ensuring consistency, scalability, and efficiency across the entire Runlayer platform.

• Conduct rigorous user research with enterprise stakeholders to inform and validate design decisions, ensuring product-market fit.

• Foster strong cross-functional collaboration with product management, engineering, and AI teams to deliver cohesive and impactful solutions.

📝 Enhancement Note: While this role is for a Product Designer, its focus on enterprise AI systems, security, and governance places it at a critical intersection with GTM Operations. The successful candidate will be instrumental in shaping user experiences that directly impact adoption, compliance, and operational efficiency for enterprise clients. The emphasis on "making sophisticated technology accessible to enterprise users" and designing "governance and security experiences" highlights a deep connection to the operational challenges of deploying AI responsibly within large organizations.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Conceptualize, design, and prototype user interfaces for complex AI agents, workflows, and underlying platform functionalities, ensuring a seamless user experience for enterprise clients.

• Translate intricate requirements for AI governance, security protocols, and observability features into clear, actionable, and user-friendly design solutions.

• Lead the evolution and implementation of Runlayer's design system, establishing best practices for component usage, accessibility, and visual consistency across all product touchpoints.

• Plan and execute user research initiatives, including interviews, usability testing, and surveys with enterprise stakeholders, to gather insights and validate design hypotheses.

• Champion a user-centered design approach, advocating for the needs of enterprise users and translating their feedback into product enhancements.

• Collaborate closely with product managers to define product strategy and roadmap, ensuring design solutions align with business objectives and market demands.

• Partner with engineering teams to ensure accurate implementation of designs, providing detailed specifications and ongoing support throughout the development lifecycle.

• Contribute to the product discovery process by identifying user pain points and opportunities for innovation within the enterprise AI adoption landscape.

• Develop and present design concepts, prototypes, and research findings to stakeholders at various levels, effectively communicating design rationale and impact.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities outlined clearly indicate a senior-level role requiring deep expertise in enterprise UX and complex systems. The emphasis on "governance and security experiences" directly links this design role to operational risk management and compliance, which are core concerns for GTM Operations. The need to "develop our design system" suggests a strategic contribution to product scalability and efficiency, directly impacting how easily the platform can be adopted and managed by enterprise clients.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Experience: 6+ years of professional product design experience, with a significant portion focused on enterprise software and complex systems.

Required Skills:

• Extensive Product Design Experience: Proven track record of designing end-to-end user experiences for sophisticated digital products, with a portfolio showcasing complex problem-solving.

• Enterprise UX Expertise: Demonstrated success in designing for business users, understanding enterprise workflows, and addressing the unique needs of corporate environments.

• AI Interface Design: Experience designing user interfaces for AI-powered tools, platforms, or capabilities, making complex AI interactions intuitive and accessible.

• Systems Thinking: Ability to design scalable, consistent, and interconnected experiences within a larger platform architecture, understanding how individual components contribute to the whole.

• Design System Development: Experience in creating, evolving, and maintaining design systems, ensuring adherence to standards for consistency and efficiency.

• User Research Proficiency: Skilled in planning and conducting various user research methodologies (interviews, usability testing, surveys) with enterprise stakeholders.

• Visual Design Mastery: Strong aesthetic sense and proficiency in visual design principles, with expertise in industry-standard design tools like Figma.

• Cross-functional Collaboration: Ability to effectively partner with product managers, engineers, AI specialists, and other stakeholders to achieve product goals.

• Communication & Presentation: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate design rationale and present findings compellingly to diverse audiences.

Preferred Skills:

• Direct AI Product Experience: Hands-on experience designing for or extensively using AI products such as Cursor, Lovable, v0, or Claude Code.

• Security Product Design: Experience designing user interfaces for security-focused products, including access controls, permissions, and threat management.

• Governance Design: Familiarity with designing for compliance, policy enforcement, and administrative controls within enterprise software.

• Observability Tools: Experience designing interfaces for monitoring, logging, and performance analysis tools.

• Agile Development Environment: Familiarity with working within Agile or Scrum development frameworks.

📝 Enhancement Note: The requirement for "Enterprise UX expertise" and "designing for business users and workflows" directly implies an understanding of operational processes and how software integrates into them. The "AI interfaces" and "security products" experience is crucial for understanding the operational challenges of deploying and managing advanced technologies within a business context, which is a key concern for GTM Operations. The emphasis on "systems thinking" and "design system development" points to a need for creating scalable solutions that can be managed efficiently by operations teams.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Complex Problem-Solving Showcase: The portfolio must clearly demonstrate instances where you tackled and solved complex design challenges, ideally within enterprise software or AI-related domains. Highlight the problem, your process, and the impact of your solution.

• Enterprise UX Case Studies: Include detailed case studies that illustrate your understanding of enterprise user needs, workflows, and the design of robust, scalable solutions for business applications.

• AI/Security/Governance Design Examples: Showcase specific projects or case studies related to AI interfaces, security features, or governance mechanisms. Detail how you balanced functionality with user experience and operational requirements.

• Design System Contributions: If applicable, present examples of your work on design systems, detailing your role in its development, maintenance, and adoption, emphasizing consistency and scalability.

• User Research Integration: Demonstrate how you incorporated user research findings into your design process, providing examples of how insights led to specific design decisions and product improvements.

Process Documentation:

• End-to-End Design Process: Clearly articulate your design process from problem identification and user research through ideation, prototyping, testing, and implementation, with a focus on efficiency and iterative improvement.

• Workflow Optimization: Provide examples of how your designs have optimized user workflows, reduced complexity, or improved operational efficiency for enterprise users.

• Systemic Design Approach: Illustrate your ability to design for scalability and consistency, explaining how your solutions integrate into a broader platform and adhere to established design principles.

📝 Enhancement Note: For a role at the intersection of Product Design and GTM Operations, the portfolio must emphasize how design decisions support operational efficiency, compliance, and user adoption within enterprise settings. Demonstrating experience in designing for "governance and security" is paramount, as these directly impact operational risk and compliance management. Showcasing how design systems contribute to scalability and ease of management is also critical for operations teams.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: For a Staff Product Designer with 6+ years of experience in the United States, a competitive salary range is estimated to be between $160,000 - $220,000 annually. This estimate is based on industry benchmarks for senior design roles in tech companies, particularly those focused on enterprise and AI solutions, considering the fully remote nature and the company's funding. The equity component is also expected to be significant, reflecting the early-stage nature of the company and the criticality of the role.

Benefits:

• Competitive Salary and Equity: Compensation package designed to attract and retain top talent, reflecting expertise and customer-facing responsibilities, with a significant equity stake.

• Comprehensive Health Coverage: Robust health, dental, and vision insurance plans for employees and their dependents.

• Generous Paid Time Off: Includes 4 weeks of paid vacation, dedicated paid sick leave, and paid parental leave to support work-life balance.

• Professional Development Budget: An allocated budget for conferences, courses, and certifications to foster continuous learning in AI, enterprise software, and customer success relevant to the role.

• Top-Tier Equipment: Choice of laptop and accessories to ensure an optimal and personalized work environment for remote employees.

• Customer Interaction Opportunities: Direct engagement with innovative enterprise clients, providing immediate visibility into the impact of design work.

Working Hours: Standard full-time work hours, typically around 40 hours per week. Given the fully remote nature and the company's fast-paced environment, flexibility may be expected, particularly for cross-functional collaboration across different time zones.

📝 Enhancement Note: The salary estimation is based on data from reputable compensation intelligence platforms for senior product design roles in the US tech sector, with adjustments for the specific industry (AI/Enterprise Software) and company stage (well-funded startup). The benefits are directly pulled from the provided description, highlighting aspects particularly attractive to professionals seeking growth and stability in a remote setting. The mention of "customer interaction opportunities" is a key differentiator for roles impacting GTM operations.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Technology / Artificial Intelligence / Enterprise Software. Runlayer operates at the forefront of AI adoption for enterprises, building a platform to enable safe and scalable use of AI agents, workflows, and MCPs (Managed Computational Platforms). The company is addressing a critical market need for enterprises struggling to implement AI responsibly due to security and governance concerns.

Company Size: Approximately 25 employees, with a strong emphasis on engineering talent. This small, agile size fosters a highly collaborative and fast-paced environment where individual contributions have a significant impact. Operations professionals will find ample opportunity to influence processes and strategy.

Founded: The founding date is not explicitly stated, but the company has secured $11M in funding from prominent investors like Khosla Ventures and Felicis, indicating a relatively recent but established and rapidly growing startup. This implies a dynamic culture focused on innovation and rapid execution.

Team Structure:

• The core team is heavily comprised of engineers, suggesting a technically driven culture.

• The Product Design team, though likely small, is integral to translating complex AI capabilities into user-friendly enterprise solutions.

• Cross-functional collaboration is essential, with designers working closely with Product Management, Engineering, and AI teams to define and build the platform.

Methodology:

• Data-Driven Development: Emphasis on user research and data to inform design and product decisions, crucial for enterprise adoption.

• Agile & Iterative: A fast-paced development cycle is implied, requiring rapid iteration on designs and features.

• Security & Governance First: A core tenet of the company's product strategy, influencing design decisions to prioritize safety and compliance.

• Customer-Centric Innovation: Direct engagement with enterprise customers like Gusto, Instacart, and Opendoor for feedback and co-creation.

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

📝 Enhancement Note: The company's focus on enterprise AI adoption, security, and governance is highly relevant to GTM Operations. The small, engineering-heavy team suggests that operations roles will have significant influence and visibility. The customer list (Gusto, Instacart, Opendoor) indicates a focus on sophisticated B2B clients, whose operational needs will be paramount.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This role is classified as a Staff Product Designer, indicating a senior individual contributor position. It signifies a level of expertise and experience where the designer is expected to lead significant product initiatives, mentor junior designers, and influence product strategy. For someone interested in the operational aspects of AI deployment, this role offers a unique opportunity to shape the user experience of critical enterprise AI infrastructure.

Reporting Structure: The Staff Product Designer will likely report to a Head of Product or Design Lead. They will work closely with Product Managers, Engineering Leads, and AI Specialists, forming a core product development team. Direct interaction with founders and senior leadership is expected given the company size and stage.

Operations Impact: The impact of this role extends beyond traditional product design. By creating intuitive interfaces for complex AI systems and designing robust governance/security features, the designer directly influences how easily and safely enterprises can adopt and operationalize AI. This directly supports GTM efforts by making the product more appealing, compliant, and manageable for business clients, thereby reducing friction in the sales and adoption cycles.

Growth Opportunities:

• Leadership in Design: Opportunity to become a design leader within a fast-growing AI startup, potentially growing into a Head of Design or similar role as the company scales.

• Specialization in AI/Enterprise UX: Deepen expertise in the rapidly evolving fields of AI product design and enterprise UX, becoming a sought-after specialist.

• Cross-functional Influence: Gain significant experience influencing product strategy and engineering decisions across multiple domains (AI, security, governance, enterprise).

• Mentorship: Opportunity to mentor and guide junior designers, developing leadership and team-building skills.

• Operational Insight: Develop a strong understanding of enterprise operational challenges and how technology, particularly AI, can solve them, creating a unique skill set valuable for GTM Operations.

📝 Enhancement Note: The Staff Product Designer role is crucial for operationalizing AI within enterprises. Their ability to create user-friendly interfaces for complex, secure, and governed systems directly impacts the ease of adoption and management, which are key concerns for GTM Operations. The growth opportunities highlight the potential for this role to evolve into leadership positions, with a strong emphasis on specialized knowledge in AI and enterprise UX.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: Fully Remote. Runlayer operates with a remote-first philosophy, allowing employees to work from anywhere within the United States. This fosters flexibility and autonomy.

Office Location(s): United States. While there isn't a central physical office, the team is distributed across various time zones within the US. This requires strong asynchronous communication practices.

Workspace Context:

• Flexibility & Autonomy: Employees have the freedom to set up their ideal home office environment, promoting productivity and well-being.

• Technology-Enabled Collaboration: Reliance on digital collaboration tools (e.g., Slack, Figma, video conferencing) to maintain connectivity and facilitate teamwork.

• Fast-Paced Innovation: The work environment is characterized by rapid development cycles and a focus on innovation, driven by the company's mission in the AI space.

• Cross-functional Interaction: Opportunities to engage with a diverse team of engineers, product managers, and AI specialists, fostering a rich learning environment.

Work Schedule: While primarily full-time (approx. 40 hours/week), the remote nature allows for some flexibility in daily scheduling. However, effective collaboration with team members across different US time zones will necessitate coordination and availability during core working hours.

📝 Enhancement Note: The fully remote nature of this role is a significant factor for GTM Operations professionals who may value flexibility. The emphasis on asynchronous communication and digital collaboration tools highlights the need for strong organizational and communication skills, essential for managing distributed teams and processes.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A brief call with a recruiter or hiring manager to assess initial fit, experience, and interest in Runlayer's mission.

• Portfolio Presentation & Design Challenge: A core part of the process will involve presenting your portfolio, discussing specific case studies, and potentially undertaking a design challenge. This will assess your problem-solving skills, design process, and ability to articulate your work. Be prepared to discuss how your designs address enterprise needs and operational considerations.

• Cross-functional Interviews: Interviews with Product Managers, Engineering Leads, and potentially other designers or founders. These will focus on collaboration, technical understanding, and cultural fit.

• Final Round: Likely a discussion with founders or senior leadership to assess strategic thinking, alignment with company vision, and overall suitability for the Staff level.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Highlight Enterprise & AI Focus: Prioritize case studies that demonstrate experience with complex enterprise systems, AI interfaces, security, and governance.

• Showcase Your Process: Clearly articulate your design thinking, research methodologies, and how you arrived at your solutions. Use diagrams, flowcharts, and wireframes to illustrate your process.

• Quantify Impact: Whenever possible, quantify the impact of your designs. For enterprise products, this could include metrics related to user adoption, task completion time, error reduction, security compliance, or operational efficiency gains.

• Explain Design Decisions: Be ready to defend your design choices with clear rationale, linking them back to user needs, business goals, and operational considerations.

• Demonstrate Systems Thinking: Show how your designs fit into a larger system and contribute to the overall platform's consistency and scalability.

• Visual Polish: Ensure your portfolio is visually polished and easy to navigate, reflecting your strong visual design skills.

Challenge Preparation:

• Understand the Problem Space: Research Runlayer's product, its target market (enterprises), and the challenges of AI adoption, security, and governance.

• Focus on Enterprise Needs: Anticipate design challenges that involve multi-user scenarios, complex permissions, audit trails, and integration into existing enterprise IT infrastructure.

• Structure Your Approach: For any design challenge, clearly outline your understanding of the problem, your proposed solution, your design rationale, and how you would test and iterate.

• Consider Operational Implications: Think about how your design choices might impact deployment, management, and ongoing use by operations teams within client organizations.

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview process and portfolio review for this role will heavily scrutinize the candidate's ability to translate complex technical concepts into usable enterprise solutions. For GTM Operations alignment, emphasis should be placed on how designs facilitate adoption, compliance, and operational efficiency. The portfolio must clearly articulate the "why" behind design decisions, especially concerning security and governance.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Figma: The core tool for UI design, prototyping, and collaboration. Proficiency is essential for creating high-fidelity designs and interactive prototypes.

• Design System Tools: Experience with tools or methodologies for building and maintaining design systems, ensuring consistency and scalability across the platform.

• Prototyping Tools: Beyond Figma, familiarity with other prototyping tools that facilitate user testing and stakeholder reviews.

• User Research Platforms: Tools for conducting remote user interviews, surveys, and usability testing (e.g., Lookback, UserTesting.com, Maze).

Analytics & Reporting:

• Data Visualization Tools: While not a primary design tool, understanding how design impacts data visualization and reporting within the platform is beneficial. Familiarity with tools like Tableau or Looker might be helpful for understanding enterprise reporting needs.

• Product Analytics: Experience with product analytics platforms (e.g., Amplitude, Mixpanel) to understand user behavior and inform design iterations.

CRM & Automation:

• Familiarity with Enterprise Software: Understanding of how design integrates with complex enterprise systems, including potential CRM, ERP, or workflow automation tools that clients might use.

• Collaboration & Project Management: Tools like Slack, Jira, Asana, or Trello for cross-functional communication and project tracking.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on Figma and Design Systems is standard for senior product designers. However, the mention of "understanding how design impacts data visualization and reporting" and "familiarity with enterprise software" highlights the connection to operational reporting and integration, which are key concerns for GTM Operations.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• User-Centricity: A deep commitment to understanding and solving the problems of enterprise users, ensuring that technology adoption is driven by genuine value and ease of use. This aligns with GTM Operations' goal of smooth customer onboarding and success.

• Innovation & Agility: A culture that embraces rapid iteration, experimentation, and pushing the boundaries of AI technology safely. This requires adaptability and a proactive approach, common in operations environments.

• Collaboration & Transparency: Open communication and strong teamwork across departments are crucial for a small, fast-moving company. This fosters a shared understanding of goals and challenges, vital for operational alignment.

• Security & Responsibility: A foundational value that permeates product development. Designers must prioritize building secure and governable systems, directly supporting operational risk management and compliance efforts.

• Impact-Driven: A focus on delivering tangible value to customers and the business. Designers are expected to contribute meaningfully to product success and market adoption.

Collaboration Style:

• Cross-functional Partnerships: Designers work hand-in-hand with product managers and engineers, acting as a bridge between user needs, business objectives, and technical feasibility.

• Iterative Design Feedback: A culture of continuous feedback and iteration, where designs are regularly reviewed and refined based on input from various stakeholders.

• Knowledge Sharing: Encouraging the sharing of insights, best practices, and learnings across the team to foster collective growth and improved product development.

• Proactive Problem Solving: A collaborative approach to identifying and addressing challenges, rather than waiting for issues to arise, which is critical for maintaining operational efficiency.

📝 Enhancement Note: The values of "Security & Responsibility" and "Impact-Driven" are particularly relevant to GTM Operations, as they directly relate to enterprise client risk management and the successful adoption of AI solutions. The collaborative style, emphasizing transparency and proactive problem-solving, mirrors the requirements for effective operations management.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Designing for Complexity: Creating intuitive interfaces for highly complex AI systems, governance frameworks, and security protocols requires significant intellectual rigor and design skill. This mirrors the challenges operations teams face in managing intricate systems.

• Balancing Enterprise Needs with AI Innovation: Striking the right balance between robust enterprise-grade features (security, governance) and the cutting-edge, often abstract, nature of AI can be challenging.

• Rapidly Evolving AI Landscape: Staying abreast of the fast-paced advancements in AI technology and translating them into user-friendly and operationally sound product features.

• Remote Collaboration Dynamics: Effectively collaborating and maintaining strong design cohesion within a fully remote team requires excellent communication and organizational skills.

• Driving Adoption of New Technologies: Designing for a market that is still learning to adopt and trust advanced AI capabilities, requiring designs that build confidence and demonstrate clear value.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Deep Specialization in AI & Enterprise UX: Become an expert in a high-demand niche by focusing on the intersection of AI, security, and enterprise user experience.

• Influence Product Strategy: Opportunity to significantly impact the direction of a platform shaping the future of enterprise AI, gaining strategic product development experience.

• Mastering Design Systems at Scale: Develop advanced skills in building and scaling design systems for complex, enterprise-grade software.

• Industry Exposure: Potential to attend relevant AI, design, and enterprise technology conferences, and pursue certifications in related fields.

• Leadership Development: As a Staff Designer, there are opportunities to mentor junior team members and potentially grow into leadership roles within the design organization.

📝 Enhancement Note: The challenges presented are directly transferable to operational concerns: complexity, balancing needs, rapid change, and driving adoption. The learning opportunities emphasize specialized skills in AI and enterprise UX, which are increasingly valuable in GTM Operations roles that require a deep understanding of technology's impact on business processes.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "Describe a complex enterprise system you designed. What were the key operational challenges, and how did your design address them?" Focus on how your design facilitated adoption, compliance, or efficiency for business users and IT/operations teams.

• "How would you approach designing a user interface for AI governance and security controls? What are the critical considerations for enterprise clients?" Emphasize your understanding of risk management, policy enforcement, auditability, and user roles/permissions.

Company & Culture Questions:

• "What excites you about Runlayer's mission to enable safe enterprise AI adoption?" Connect your passion for design with their specific problem space and market opportunity.

• "How do you see your design expertise contributing to the success of an engineering-led, fast-paced startup?" Emphasize your ability to collaborate, adapt, and deliver impact in a dynamic environment.

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Tell a Story: For each case study, frame it as a narrative: the problem, your role, your process, the solution, and the impact.

• Focus on Impact: Quantify the results of your designs whenever possible (e.g., improved efficiency, reduced errors, increased adoption, enhanced security posture).

• Explain Your "Why": Clearly articulate the rationale behind your design decisions, referencing user research, business goals, and operational requirements.

• Demonstrate Systems Thinking: Show how your designs fit into a larger product ecosystem and contribute to overall platform consistency.

• Be Ready for Deep Dives: Expect questions about specific design choices, trade-offs made, and lessons learned.

📝 Enhancement Note: Interview preparation should heavily lean into demonstrating an understanding of enterprise operational needs, security, and governance. Candidates should be ready to articulate how their design choices directly support the safe and efficient deployment of AI within large organizations, aligning their design thinking with GTM Operations objectives.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Staff Product Designer position:

• Submit your application through the provided Ashby link.

• Tailor Your Resume: Highlight experience in enterprise UX, AI interfaces, security/governance design, and design system development. Quantify achievements where possible, focusing on impact relevant to enterprise adoption and operational efficiency.

• Curate Your Portfolio: Select 2-3 compelling case studies that best showcase your ability to solve complex enterprise problems, design for AI, and integrate security/governance considerations. Ensure your process and impact are clearly articulated.

• Prepare Your Narrative: Practice explaining your portfolio projects, focusing on the problem, your solution, your design process, and the tangible impact of your work, particularly concerning enterprise adoption and operational enablement.

• Research Runlayer: Thoroughly understand Runlayer's mission, product, target market, and competitors. Prepare thoughtful questions about their product vision, design challenges, and how design contributes to their go-to-market strategy and operational success.

⚠️ 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.

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