Founding AI Product Design Lead

a16z speedrun

$120K — $150K *
Consumer Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Senior or leadership-level design experience in a startup environment.
  • Proven portfolio showcasing shipped consumer app designs and operational tools.
  • Ability to navigate complex workflows and create polished user interfaces.
  • Fluency with modern design and AI tools, such as Figma and Claude.
  • Adaptable in focusing on product design while also managing brand elements.
  • Demonstrated speed and pragmatism in design processes.
  • Strong commitment to quality in design deliverables.

Responsibilities

  • Design product flows and user interfaces for consumer apps and advisor tools.
  • Create seamless human-in-the-loop experiences integrating AI.
  • Manage and uphold brand identity across all company touchpoints.
  • Prototype and iteratively test designs with real users.
  • Conduct design reviews to maintain high quality during production.
  • Establish design culture and quality standards for future hires.

Benefits

  • Meaningful equity stake as a founding team member.
  • Hybrid work model with flexibility in schedule.
  • Opportunity to shape the design culture from the ground up.
Full Job Description
Founding AI Product Design Lead

Location: Austin, TX (Hybrid, Northwest Hills office)
Schedule: Full-time

The Role

As our founding designer, you'll own design end to end across product, brand, and everything in between. You'll define how Maestro looks, feels, and behaves across every touchpoint.

You'll design the full member experience: our mobile app, travel advisor touchpoints, internal ops interfaces, and the AI agents woven throughout. You must care deeply about quality, whether a human or an AI is on the other end.

Our product and engineering teams live in Claude Code daily. You'll be embedded in that process, shaping how AI shows up across the product rather than just designing around it. Using AI tools to move fast is core to how we work, and it's non-negotiable for this role.

What You'll Do
  • Design product flows, interfaces, and interaction details for our consumer app, advisor tools, and ops workflows
  • Shape how AI shows up in the product by designing agentic and human-in-the-loop experiences that feel effortless and trustworthy
  • Own the brand: identity, site, decks, and all company touchpoints
  • Prototype and test with real members and advisors, iterating quickly
  • Run design review and hold the quality bar as we ship, keeping standards high without slowing the team down
  • Set the design culture, systems, and quality standards future hires will inherit


What We're Looking For
  • Senior or leadership-level experience at a startup, with the drive to run design without a playbook
  • A portfolio of shipped product work (not just concepts), especially consumer app design and operational backends (advisor tools, internal ops, dashboards)
  • Comfort with complex internal workflows and polished consumer surfaces alike
  • Fluency with modern design and AI tools (Figma, Claude, and the latest developments), plus a genuine excitement for AI-native experiences
  • Product-focused but able to flex into brand when needed
  • Speed and pragmatism: you ship and refine, rather than polish forever
  • Strong opinions about quality, loosely held about everything else


Location & Work Model

This is an 3 days a week in-person, hybrid role based in Austin, TX, out of our Northwest Hills office.

Compensation & Equity

As our founding design hire, you'll receive a meaningful equity stake plus salary.

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