Founding Design Engineer

Job description

ABOUT PROBOOK Probook is the AI Operating System for the home services industry, transforming how plumbing, HVAC, and electrical businesses operate. Our impact is real. Dispatching the right technician to the right job can mean the difference between a $300 "band-aid" fix and a $20,000 system replacement. By automating previously high-touch workflows around-the-clock, Probook ensures a consistent customer experience without the need for 24/7 live staffing. We unify our customers' processes into a single, scalable platform, giving businesses one place to run their entire dispatch operation. THE OPPORTUNITY The home services industry runs on expertise built over decades, but the software these businesses use every day hasn't kept up. Most dispatchers are still working with tools that look like they were designed in 2008 - barely a step up from pen and paper - because for a long time, nobody with real product design chops was paying attention to this market. That's the opportunity. Probook is the first product with the technical ambition to match what this industry actually deserves and you'll be the first designer to shape what it looks like. For a lot of the operators we work with, Probook is the most well-designed piece of software they've ever used in their professional lives. That bar is only going to get higher with you on the team. You won't be optimizing a mature product or iterating on someone else's design system. You'll be defining what world-class looks like for an entire industry that's seeing it for the first time. WHAT YOU'LL DO Design Ownership & Delivery - Own the quality of Probook's UI/UX across our chrome extension, mobile product, and web platform end-to-end - Translate customer pain points from real conversations with real operators into product and UX improvements that ship - Obsessively explore the problem space and iterate before coming up with a solution. You know that the best product decisions come from a deep understanding of how operators work, not from settling on the first viable answer. - Independently ship front-end changes: you'll be making actual production code changes, not handing off to engineers and walking away - Move fast and sweat the details - you’re able to match the team’s velocity and turn things around in hours, not days/weeks without compromising on quality Product Partnership - Work directly with engineers from spec to ship, closing the gap between what gets built and what should be built - Be a daily thought partner to the founders on product direction, with a real seat at the table on decisions that matter - Work directly with customers in the field to understand workflows and pain points. You can and should expect to be on calls with customers regularly to hear directly from them - Identify UX problems before customers surface them; anticipate common tradeoffs and design around them Craft & Standards - Establish Probook's visual and interaction design language from the ground up - Use AI-assisted tools (Claude Code, Cursor, and similar) as force multipliers to spin up and iterate on prototypes at speed - Set the bar for design quality and detail orientation across everything the company ships WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR Experience - 4–6 years of product design experience; the ideal trajectory is two serious stints (2+ years each), ideally at startups - has built bug-free frontend in production, doesn't need another engineer to make this happen - B2B SaaS background: you understand that enterprise and ops-focused product design is fundamentally different from consumer, and you've lived that difference - Strong portfolio of shipped work Technical Fluency - A track record of shipping frontend code independently - not just handing off specs, but owning changes through to production - Fluency with AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) is non-negotiable - we'll ask specifically about this - Can take a product problem, spin up multiple end-to-end flows using AI tooling, and pressure-test tradeoffs quickly and independently Product Sense & Execution - Exceptional design taste and detail orientation - you notice typographic inconsistencies and can't let them go - Communicate with clarity and precision - you can articulate the why of a design decision, not just show it - Strong enough product instincts to prioritize correctly without constant guidance; you work on the most important flows, not the most interesting ones - Proven ability to absorb context fast and be dangerous with incomplete information - High-velocity iteration mindset - scrappy and hungry, not perfectionist Mindset - Roll-up-your-sleeves mentality; you're the first designer, which means you define everything from scratch - Intrinsically motivated to get better at your craft: this shows up in how you spend your time outside of work - Comfortable being embedded with the C-suite daily and operating in a high-trust, high-accountability environment - In-office, 5 days a week in Manhattan: this role will need to absorb the collective product thinking of the company more than anyone else on the team WHY NOW? This is the exact moment where the first designer at a breakout company becomes a foundational part of its story: Design greenfield: You'll define Probook's design language, patterns, and quality bar - everything you create becomes the standard. Direct impact: The team is small enough that your decisions ripple across the entire product and are visible to every customer we have. Timing: In 12 months, the core product will be set. Right now, you can still shape everything. WHY JOIN PROBOOK? - The Tailwinds: $700B industry with clear tailwinds: AI adoption, labor shortages, and generational transitions creating demand for operational modernization. We are defining the category, not fighting for share. - The Traction: $XXM ARR in 18 months. Product-market fit proven; now we're scaling. - Funding: $40M raised from Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz - The Team: >60 people, our founding team comes from the space and has spent thousands of days onsite with our customers. We live the space. We're also becoming one of the most talent-dense start-ups in NYC (MIT, Harvard, UPenn M&T, Waterloo, Citadel, Palantir, ICPC world finalists, IMO Gold Medalists). COMPENSATION & BENEFITS - Equity: Meaningful early-stage equity - Salary: $180K – $230K - Health: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision - Perks: $500 monthly Ramp card for commuting, meals, gym, etc. (plus $25 in nightly meal delivery credit) and really good office snacks - Access: Direct access to world-class investors and advisors