We9re looking for an AI Design Engineer to partner directly with our CEO on designing, building, and shipping AI-powered tools and product solutions for the agency, end to end. Strong product judgment and design instincts matter as much as technical skill: this isn9t just coding, it9s building things well, on your own, with real ownership. **Why This Role** **Zero Bureaucracy: **A direct line to the CEO, if an idea9s good, you9re building it the same day! **Cutting-Edge Stack: **No legacy technical debt. You9ll be encouraged to use the best AI tooling available as it evolves! **Real Ownership:** A collaborative, output-focused contract that respects your autonomy - you design it, build it, and ship it, start to finish. **What You9ll Do** **Strategic Ideation & Partnering:** Work directly with the CEO to brainstorm, vet, and refine ideas for internal tools and agency tech solutions. **Design & Build, End to End:** Take a rough idea and own it fully: design the experience, build it, and ship it, with the same care for aesthetic and craft (typography, spacing, interactions) you9d bring to your own side projects. **Prototype rapidly with AI:** Use tools like Cursor, Replit Agent, Claude Code, and v0 to spin up proof-of-concepts, interactive mockups, and working MVPs in hours, not weeks. **Bridge the gap:** Translate high-level business goals and creative briefs into working products the team can actually use - no separate designer or dev team needed. **What You9ll Bring** - **AI Native Builder: **A portfolio with at least one product you designed AND built alone, end to end (a live link, not mockups) using modern AI coding tools (Cursor, v0, Claude Code, or similar). - **A Design Eye: **Your own site or side projects are polished - good typography, spacing, micro-interactions.Craft is the qualification. - **Speed and comfort with ambiguity: **You ship fast and don9t need a stable spec to move, even as the only technical person in the room. - **Technical range:** You understand how modern web apps actually work: APIs, databases, LLM integration, authentication, cloud deployment. - **Product instincts:** You challenge assumptions, optimize UX, and can turn a CEO9s casual idea into a structured plan: then explain the business "why" in plain language to non-technical stakeholders. **Working at FWD People** We are a senior team that champions integrity, adaptability, excellence, and growth. Here, you9ll collaborate with solution-focused colleagues to advance both our clients and our teams. Our office is located in Brooklyn Heights, and we offer a flexible hybrid work schedule. We value in-person collaboration and connection but also understand the importance of offering the flexibility to work from home.