Product Designer

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Product Designer

Company: Arcade

Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Job Type: Full-time

Category: Product Design & User Experience

Date Posted: May 22, 2026

Experience Level: Mid-level (2-5 years)

Remote Status: On-site

🚀 Role Summary

• Design and build the foundational UX/UI function for a cutting-edge AI infrastructure company, shaping how customers interact with powerful AI agents.

• Own end-to-end product design, from initial customer research and concept ideation through to shipping polished UI in a modern React and Tailwind codebase.

• Establish and evolve a design system, setting the standard for quality and consistency as the company scales its product offerings.

• Develop clear, intuitive interfaces for complex technical concepts like agentic tools, authentication scopes, and observability, fostering trust and understanding with AI/ML architects.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role is positioned as the first designer, implying a significant opportunity to define processes, methodologies, and the overall design culture. The focus on "trust surfaces" and "agentic tools" within the AI and developer infrastructure space suggests a need for deep empathy with technical users and a strong ability to translate complex technical functions into user-friendly experiences.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Lead the design of critical Dashboard surfaces, encompassing user flows, interaction patterns, and visual aesthetics, from initial sketches to final implementation.

• Conduct in-depth customer research with AI/ML architects, understanding their needs, pain points, and workflows to inform design decisions.

• Collaborate daily with engineering teams, participating in design handoffs, reviewing implementation in code, and iterating on designs based on production feedback.

• Partner with product management to define the roadmap and prioritize features for tools and growth areas, ensuring design alignment with business objectives.

• Define and shape the design system alongside engineering, leveraging and extending existing Radix and Tailwind patterns to create a scalable and maintainable component library.

• Translate complex agent states, including tool execution, authentication scopes, observability data, and billing information, into clear and understandable user interfaces.

• Articulate design rationale through clear documentation and communication, enabling engineers, product managers, and marketing teams to build upon design decisions and educate users.

• Establish and maintain the highest standards of design quality, ensuring that the patterns created will be inherited and adopted by future design hires.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on "agent state legibility" and "teaching concepts inside the product" points to a role that requires not just visual and interaction design skills but also strong product thinking and an ability to communicate complex technical ideas effectively. This is more than just UI design; it's about designing for understanding and trust in a novel technology domain.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: While no formal education requirements are listed, a strong understanding of design principles and user-centered design methodologies is implied.

Experience: 3-5 years of product design experience, with a proven track record in developer-facing or B2B SaaS products.

Required Skills:

• Demonstrated experience in end-to-end product design, including user research, user flow mapping, interaction design, visual design, and shipping products.

• A strong portfolio showcasing shipped work that highlights the complete product design lifecycle.

• High proficiency in Figma, with the ability to create organized, component-driven designs.

• Comfort and aptitude for working within technical product domains, including understanding APIs, authentication, and agent behavior.

• Proven ability to conduct customer research independently, synthesize findings, and translate them into design improvements.

• Experience collaborating closely with engineering teams to ensure successful product implementation.

• Solid understanding of design systems, including components, tokens, and patterns, and their scalability.

• Ability to thrive in ambiguous environments and make effective decisions with incomplete information.

Preferred Skills:

• Prior experience designing for AI, ML, or agent-based products.

• Experience in developer-tooling, API platforms, or infrastructure companies (e.g., Stripe, Vercel, Auth0, Postman).

• Proven success in contributing to or leading the development of a design system that has been adopted by multiple engineers.

• Experience designing for engineers as primary users, understanding their unique UI/UX preferences.

• Basic proficiency in coding (e.g., reading React, basic prototyping in code) to accelerate the design and implementation cycle.

📝 Enhancement Note: The "formal title matters less than the work" statement indicates a focus on demonstrable skills and impact over strict adherence to job titles. The preference for candidates comfortable with technical spaces and coding suggests a hands-on role where designers are deeply integrated with the engineering process.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Showcase end-to-end product design projects, detailing the entire process from initial user research and problem definition through to interaction design, visual design, and successful product launches.

• Highlight specific examples of how user research directly influenced design decisions and product outcomes.

• Demonstrate a strong understanding and application of design systems, including component creation, token usage, and pattern development within Figma.

• Include case studies that illustrate the ability to design for complex, technical B2B SaaS or developer-facing products.

• Present evidence of collaboration with engineering teams and successful implementation of designs into production code.

Process Documentation:

• Emphasize the methodology used for user research, including participant recruitment, interview techniques, and synthesis of findings.

• Detail the workflow for ideation, wireframing, prototyping, and user testing within your design process.

• Explain how you collaborate with engineering and product management throughout the product development lifecycle.

• Document your approach to contributing to or building design systems, including component definition and governance.

• Illustrate how you've translated complex technical requirements into clear and intuitive user interfaces.

📝 Enhancement Note: Given this is the first designer role, the portfolio is critical for demonstrating the ability to build function, not just execute tasks. Emphasis should be placed on showing initiative, process ownership, and the ability to establish best practices from the ground up.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: $127,000 - $172,000 USD per year.

Benefits:

• Competitive Salary

• Equity options

• Comprehensive Benefits Package (Specifics not detailed but typical for tech startups)

Working Hours: The standard full-time work week is assumed to be 40 hours, with flexibility potentially available given the nature of startup environments, though the role is on-site.

📝 Enhancement Note: The salary range provided is typical for a mid-level Product Designer in a high-cost-of-living area like San Francisco, especially for a well-funded startup in a high-growth sector like AI. The inclusion of equity is a standard offering for early-stage tech companies, reflecting potential for significant upside as the company scales.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: AI Infrastructure & Developer Tools. Arcade is positioned at the forefront of enabling AI agents to take real-world actions, creating the essential "tools" that bridge AI models with enterprise systems.

Company Size: Early-stage startup, likely small to medium-sized, with a focus on rapid growth and innovation. The description mentions assembling a "dream team" of experts.

Founded: Arcade is a relatively new venture, aiming to solve a critical problem in the current AI landscape. The CEO's prior success with Stormpath (acquired by Okta) and the CTO's background at Redis and in LLM application development indicate a strong technical foundation and proven entrepreneurial spirit.

Team Structure:

• The design function is being built from scratch, with this role reporting to the Engineering Manager for Tools and Growth.

• This implies a collaborative, engineering-led environment where design is closely integrated with development.

Methodology:

• Data-driven decision-making, with a strong emphasis on user research and customer feedback.

• Agile development practices, with rapid iteration cycles and quick deployment of features.

• Focus on building robust, scalable infrastructure for AI applications.

• Emphasis on fostering trust and security in AI agent interactions.

Company Website: https://www.arcade.dev/

📝 Enhancement Note: The company's mission to power AI applications with "tools" that enable real-world actions is a significant differentiator. The culture is likely fast-paced, innovative, and focused on solving hard technical problems with a strong emphasis on developer experience and enterprise-grade solutions.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This is a foundational role for the design function at Arcade. It is a mid-level position (2-5 years experience) with significant individual contributor responsibilities and the opportunity to shape a new discipline within the company.

Reporting Structure: The role reports to the Engineering Manager for Tools and Growth, indicating a close working relationship with the engineering team and