Product Designer

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Product Designer

Company: Factory

Location: San Francisco, CA, United States

Job Type: FULL_TIME

Category: Product Design / Engineering

Date Posted: April 28, 2026

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

Remote Status: On-site

🚀 Role Summary

• Drive the end-to-end design process for Factory's core product surfaces, encompassing CLI, desktop applications, web platforms, and various integrations.

• Conceptualize and craft intuitive user interfaces that simplify complex autonomous software agent behaviors for enterprise engineering teams.

• Develop and maintain Factory's design system to ensure a consistent and cohesive user experience across all product touchpoints.

• Conduct user research and usability testing to gather critical feedback from target users, informing design iterations and improvements.

• Collaborate closely with product managers and engineers to facilitate rapid development cycles and deliver high-velocity product releases.

📝 Enhancement Note: While the title is "Product Designer," the description heavily emphasizes interaction with "autonomous software agents," "developers," and "enterprise engineering teams," alongside the use of "CLI," "IDE integrations," and "technical B2B products." This suggests a specialized Product Designer role focused on developer tools and complex technical platforms, rather than a general consumer-facing product designer. The role requires a deep understanding of technical workflows and the ability to translate intricate technical concepts into user-friendly interfaces.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Own the complete product design lifecycle for core product areas, from initial concept exploration and user journey mapping to final UI design and post-launch iteration.

• Design user flows and interfaces for diverse interaction modalities, including Command Line Interface (CLI) tools, intuitive desktop applications, dynamic web platforms, and integrated development environment (IDE) plugins.

• Translate sophisticated autonomous agent functionalities, such as multi-step task execution, automated code reviews, and incident response mechanisms, into clear, understandable, and actionable user interfaces.

• Establish, document, and continuously evolve Factory's comprehensive design system, ensuring brand consistency, usability, and efficiency across all product touchpoints.

• Lead and execute user research initiatives, including interviews, surveys, and usability testing sessions, with enterprise engineering professionals to validate design hypotheses and gather actionable insights.

• Foster a strong collaborative relationship with engineering and product management teams, actively participating in agile development sprints and contributing to rapid, iterative product development.

• Utilize AI tools to assist in the translation of design concepts into functional frontend code, bridging the gap between visual design and technical implementation.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities highlight a hands-on approach to design, emphasizing ownership from concept to execution. The mention of "AI tools to translate designs into working frontend code" is a significant differentiator, indicating a need for designers comfortable with leveraging AI in their workflow and understanding its role in bridging design and development.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: While no specific degree is mandated, candidates are expected to possess a strong foundational understanding of design principles and user experience, typically acquired through a degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.

Experience: A minimum of 4 years of professional product design experience is required, with a strong preference for candidates who have worked on developer tools, infrastructure products, or other technical B2B software solutions.

Required Skills:

• Minimum of 4 years of dedicated product design experience, with a focus on technical or B2B products.

• Proven ability to manage the entire product design process, from problem definition and user research to high-fidelity mockups and shipped user interfaces.

• Expertise in Figma, including advanced proficiency in creating and managing complex design systems and component libraries.

• Strong command of interaction design principles, with the ability to craft seamless and intuitive user journeys.

• Excellent visual design skills, encompassing typography, layout, spacing, and an eye for polish.

• Demonstrable experience conducting user research and usability testing with technical audiences.

• Ability to collaborate effectively with engineers, understanding technical constraints and contributing to technical feasibility discussions.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience designing for Command Line Interfaces (CLI) or terminal-based applications.

• Familiarity with AI-powered products and the unique design challenges they present.

• Experience with infrastructure products or developer tools.

• Understanding of frontend development constraints and capabilities.

• Proficiency in motion design to enhance user experience and provide clear feedback.

📝 Enhancement Note: The "4+ years" experience level combined with the emphasis on "end-to-end product thinking" and "shipped work" suggests that candidates should be prepared to showcase a mature design process and a portfolio rich with complex problem-solving examples rather than just visual aesthetics. The explicit mention of "AI tools to translate designs into working frontend code" implies a need for designers who are not only proficient in design tools but also adaptable to emerging technologies and comfortable with technical implementation details.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• A comprehensive portfolio showcasing end-to-end product design work, demonstrating a clear problem-framing process and the journey to polished, shipped user interfaces.

• Examples of complex technical workflows and how they were simplified through intuitive design solutions.

• Case studies detailing your involvement in establishing or significantly contributing to a design system.

• Demonstrations of how you have translated user research insights into impactful design iterations.

Process Documentation:

• Detailed case studies outlining your design process for at least two significant projects, including problem identification, user research, ideation, prototyping, testing, and final implementation.

• Documentation of user flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity mockups that clearly articulate design decisions and rationale.

• Examples of how you have contributed to or managed a design system, including component libraries, style guides, and governance.

• Evidence of iterative design based on user feedback and performance data.

📝 Enhancement Note: The portfolio requirement is central to this role. Candidates must be prepared to present a structured narrative for each project, emphasizing their problem-solving methodology, the impact of their design decisions, and their ability to collaborate with engineering teams. The focus on "end-to-end product thinking" means portfolios should go beyond just visual mockups and demonstrate a deep understanding of user needs, technical feasibility, and business objectives.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: Based on industry benchmarks for Product Designers with 4+ years of experience in San Francisco, CA, especially within the tech sector, the estimated salary range for this role is $130,000 - $180,000 per year. This range accounts for the high cost of living in San Francisco and the specialized nature of designing for technical B2B products and autonomous agents.

Benefits:

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance plans.

• Generous paid time off (PTO) and holidays, providing ample opportunity for rest and rejuvenation.

• Stock options or equity, offering a stake in the company's growth and success.

• Opportunities for professional development, including access to training, conferences, and workshops.

• Potential for team-building events and company-sponsored social activities.

• Support for remote work flexibility, though this specific role requires on-site presence.

Working Hours: The standard working hours for this full-time position are approximately 40 hours per week. However, given the fast-paced nature of a startup environment and the collaborative on-site model, flexibility and a willingness to adapt to project needs may be expected.

📝 Enhancement Note: Salary data for San Francisco tech roles, particularly for specialized product design positions, can vary significantly. The estimated range is based on publicly available salary data for Product Designers in the Bay Area with similar experience levels and a focus on technical products. Specific compensation will depend on the candidate's exact experience, interview performance, and alignment with the company's compensation philosophy.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Factory operates in the rapidly evolving field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and autonomous software agents, specifically targeting the needs of enterprise engineering teams. This places them at the intersection of cutting-edge technology development and B2B software solutions.

Company Size: Factory is likely a growing startup, indicated by its focus on rapid product development and embedded cross-functional teams. This environment typically fosters agility, direct impact, and close-knit collaboration.

Founded: Information on the founding date is not provided, but the company's focus on advanced AI and developer tools suggests a relatively modern establishment, likely within the last 5-10 years, aiming to capitalize on recent advancements in AI and automation.

Team Structure:

• The design team is likely small and highly integrated, working directly within product pods alongside engineers and product managers.

• Designers are expected to operate with a high degree of autonomy, owning their projects from conception to completion.

Methodology:

• Design decisions are driven by a combination of user research, data analysis, and a deep understanding of technical workflows.

• An iterative approach to design and development is employed, prioritizing rapid feedback loops and continuous improvement.

• Emphasis is placed on building robust, scalable design systems to ensure consistency and efficiency.

Company Website: https://factory.ai

📝 Enhancement Note: The description of the role as "embedded with Engineering and Product" and the requirement for "5 days a week" in-office collaboration strongly suggests a startup culture that values intense teamwork, rapid iteration, and direct communication. This environment is ideal for individuals who thrive on seeing their direct impact and enjoy working closely with technical counterparts.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This role is positioned as a Mid-Level Product Designer, requiring demonstrated experience and the ability to independently drive significant product design initiatives. It is suitable for designers who have moved beyond junior responsibilities and are ready to take ownership of core product areas.

Reporting Structure: The Product Designer will likely report to a Head of Design, Design Lead, or a Product Manager, depending on the organizational structure. They will work closely with Product Managers and Engineering leads within cross-functional pods.

Operations Impact: The Product Designer will have a direct and substantial impact on Factory's success by shaping the user experience of its core autonomous agent platform. By making complex AI functionality accessible and trustworthy, the designer will be instrumental in driving user adoption, satisfaction, and ultimately, revenue.

Growth Opportunities:

• Design Leadership: Potential to grow into a Senior Product Designer role, mentoring junior designers and taking on more complex strategic initiatives.

• Specialization: Opportunity to deepen expertise in designing for AI, developer tools, or specific product surfaces like CLI or IDE integrations.

• Product Strategy: Involvement in broader product strategy discussions, contributing design perspectives to roadmap planning and feature prioritization.

• Cross-Functional Development: Building strong relationships and understanding across engineering, product, and GTM teams, which can open doors to product management or other strategic roles.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on "end-to-end design" and "owning core product surfaces" indicates a role with significant autonomy and the potential for rapid career advancement within a growing company. The opportunity to specialize in AI product design is a significant growth avenue given current industry trends.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: The role is strictly on-site, requiring full-time presence in the San Francisco office. This indicates a preference for a highly collaborative, in-person work environment.

Office Location(s): The office is located in San Francisco, CA, described as being "walking distance to Caltrain." This suggests a central, accessible location within the city, likely in a tech hub area.

Workspace Context:

• A highly collaborative environment where designers work side-by-side with product managers and engineers.

• Access to modern design tools and potentially AI-assisted design software.

• Opportunities for spontaneous brainstorming and real-time problem-solving due to close proximity with team members.

• A dynamic startup atmosphere that encourages innovation and rapid execution.

Work Schedule: The expected work schedule is full-time, approximately 5 days a week in the office. While standard business hours are implied, the startup environment may necessitate flexibility to meet project deadlines and team needs.

📝 Enhancement Note: The explicit "5 days a week" in-office requirement is a key characteristic of the work environment. This signals a company that deeply values in-person collaboration, spontaneous ideation, and the synergy that comes from co-located teams, particularly for product development and GTM alignment.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A review of your resume and portfolio to assess foundational skills and experience.

• Portfolio Presentation & Discussion: A deep dive into your portfolio, where you will walk through 1-2 key projects, explaining your process, design decisions, and impact. Be prepared to discuss your role in the end-to-end design process and how you collaborated with engineering.

• Design Challenge/Exercise: You may be given a design exercise or a take-home assignment to assess your problem-solving skills, design thinking, and ability to work with technical constraints. This could involve designing a workflow for an autonomous agent feature.

• Cross-functional Interviews: Meetings with Product Managers and Engineers to evaluate collaboration style, technical understanding, and cultural fit.

• Final Interview: Potentially with a founder or senior leadership to discuss overall vision and strategic fit.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Storytelling: Structure your portfolio around compelling narratives. Clearly articulate the problem, your role, your process, the solutions you designed, and the outcomes or impact.

• Show, Don't Just Tell: Provide visual examples of your work at each stage of the design process (research, wireframes, mockups, prototypes, final UI).

• Focus on Impact: Quantify the impact of your designs whenever possible (e.g., improved conversion rates, reduced task completion time, increased user satisfaction scores).

• Highlight Collaboration: Demonstrate how you effectively partnered with engineering and product teams to bring designs to life.

• Technical Acumen: Showcase projects that demonstrate your ability to design for complex technical products or developer tools. Explicitly mention any use of AI in your design workflow.

Challenge Preparation:

• Understand the Domain: Familiarize yourself with autonomous agents, developer tools, and the challenges enterprise engineers face.

• Process Over Polish: Focus on demonstrating a sound design process, clear rationale, and thoughtful consideration of constraints, rather than just delivering a visually perfect solution.

• Ask Clarifying Questions: During any timed exercise, ask pertinent questions to ensure you understand the problem statement and constraints fully.

• Communicate Your Thinking: Articulate your thought process clearly, both verbally and visually, as you work through the challenge.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on "end-to-end product thinking" and "shipped work" means the portfolio review will likely be a critical stage. Candidates should be prepared to defend their design decisions with data and user research, and to clearly articulate their collaborative process with engineering. The mention of AI tools suggests that candidates might be asked about their experience or comfort level using them in their design workflow during interviews.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Figma: This is the core design tool, with mastery expected for creating complex interfaces, prototypes, and managing design systems.

• Prototyping Tools: While Figma has robust prototyping capabilities, familiarity with other tools like Principle or After Effects for advanced motion design may be beneficial.

• User Research Platforms: Experience with tools for user interviews, surveys, and usability testing (e.g., UserTesting.com, Lookback, Maze).

Analytics & Reporting:

• Familiarity with product analytics tools (e.g., Amplitude, Mixpanel) to understand user behavior and measure the impact of design changes.

CRM & Automation:

• While not directly designing within CRM systems, an understanding of how product design impacts user engagement within B2B contexts is valuable.

• Familiarity with AI tools for design assistance and frontend code generation is explicitly mentioned as a requirement.

📝 Enhancement Note: The explicit mention of "Figma" and "AI tools to translate designs into working frontend code" are key technology requirements. Candidates should be ready to discuss their proficiency in Figma and their experience or willingness to leverage AI in their design workflow, potentially demonstrating how they use these tools to bridge design and implementation.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• User-Centricity: A deep commitment to understanding and solving the problems of enterprise engineering teams.

• Collaboration: A strong emphasis on working closely with product and engineering to achieve shared goals.

• Innovation: A drive to push the boundaries of what's possible with autonomous software agents and AI.

• Speed & Agility: A culture that values rapid iteration, quick decision-making, and efficient execution.

• Ownership: Empowering individuals to take responsibility for their work and drive projects to completion.

Collaboration Style:

• Embedded Teams: Designers work directly within cross-functional product pods, fostering tight integration with engineers and PMs.

• Open Communication: A culture that encourages direct feedback, constructive critique, and transparent dialogue.

• Data-Informed Decisions: While creativity is valued, design decisions are grounded in user research, data analysis, and technical feasibility.

• Shared Vision: A collective effort to build a cohesive and powerful product that empowers developers.

📝 Enhancement Note: The culture description emphasizes a fast-paced, collaborative, and user-focused environment. The "embedded" nature of the design role means that cultural fit and the ability to communicate effectively with technical teams will be critical.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Designing for Complexity: Translating highly technical and abstract AI concepts (autonomous agents) into intuitive and trustworthy user experiences for sophisticated users (enterprise engineers).

• Cross-Platform Consistency: Ensuring a seamless and consistent user experience across diverse interfaces like CLI, desktop apps, web platforms, and IDE integrations.

• Rapid Iteration: Adapting quickly to evolving AI capabilities and user feedback in a fast-paced startup environment.

• AI Tool Integration: Effectively leveraging AI tools in the design process while maintaining design integrity and user control.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• AI Design Specialization: Becoming an expert in designing user experiences for AI-driven products.

• Developer Tool Design: Deepening expertise in understanding and designing for the needs of software developers.

• Design System Mastery: Contributing to and evolving a sophisticated design system for a complex technical product.

• Cross-functional Skill Development: Gaining in-depth knowledge of engineering and product management processes through close collaboration.

📝 Enhancement Note: The primary challenge lies in the inherent complexity of the product domain (AI agents) and its target audience (developers). Successfully navigating this requires strong problem-solving skills and a willingness to continuously learn about both AI technology and developer workflows.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "Describe a time you had to design a user experience for a highly technical or abstract concept. How did you approach it, and what was the outcome?" (Focus on breaking down complexity, user research, and iterative design).

• "How would you approach designing a new feature for our CLI that leverages autonomous agents for code review?" (Think about user flow, input/output, feedback mechanisms, and error handling for a terminal environment).

• "Discuss your experience with design systems. How do you ensure consistency across multiple platforms, and how would you manage the evolution of Factory's design system?" (Highlight component-driven design, documentation, and collaboration with engineering).

Company & Culture Questions:

• "What interests you about Factory and our mission to build autonomous software agents for developers?" (Research Factory's product, target market, and recent news).

• "How do you see yourself contributing to a fast-paced, collaborative, on-site startup environment?" (Highlight your adaptability, teamwork skills, and proactive approach).

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Project Selection: Choose 2-3 projects that best showcase your end-to-end design process, problem-solving skills, and experience with technical products or complex systems.

• Narrative Arc: For each project, tell a clear story: the problem, your role, the research, ideation, design iterations, collaboration with engineering, and the final impact.

• Visual Clarity: Use high-quality visuals that clearly demonstrate your design thinking and execution. Annotate key decisions and user flows.

• Quantify Impact: Wherever possible, use data and metrics to demonstrate the success of your designs.

• Be Ready for Deep Dives: Anticipate detailed questions about your decision-making, trade-offs, and how you handled challenges.

📝 Enhancement Note: Interview preparation should heavily focus on demonstrating an understanding of the developer tool space, the challenges of designing for AI, and the ability to thrive in a collaborative, on-site startup environment. Candidates should be ready to articulate their process, defend their decisions, and showcase how they leverage tools like Figma and potentially AI to achieve impactful results.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Product Designer position:

• Submit your application through the provided application link on Ashby.

• Portfolio Customization: Tailor your portfolio to highlight projects that demonstrate end-to-end product thinking, experience with technical B2B products, and your ability to design for complex systems or developer tools. Explicitly showcase any work involving AI or CLI interfaces.

• Resume Optimization: Ensure your resume clearly articulates your 4+ years of product design experience, focusing on achievements and responsibilities relevant to this role, such as your work with design systems, user research, and collaboration with engineering teams. Integrate keywords like "Figma," "Interaction Design," "Visual Design," and "Developer Tools."

• Interview Preparation: Practice presenting your portfolio, focusing on telling a compelling story for each project. Be ready to discuss your design process, how you use AI tools, and your experience collaborating with engineers. Prepare specific examples for behavioral questions.

• Company Research: Thoroughly research Factory.ai, its mission, its product offerings, and its target market. Understand how autonomous software agents are intended to benefit developers and enterprise engineering teams. This will help you tailor your responses and demonstrate genuine interest.

⚠️ 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.