Founding Design Engineer

Job description

We're building Vibiz.ai http://Vibiz.ai, the first Autonomous Company Platform. We're VC-backed, have hundreds of paying customers, and we're building an AI agent that autonomously runs and grows businesses - spending budget, making decisions, executing actions, and driving real results. We're looking for a Founding Design Engineer who has taste, builds beautiful things, thinks analytically when needed, and ships them into production. Your job is to make the product feel obvious - so that our users can move fast and trust what they see. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Design and build agentic interfaces that feel magical - the AI does the work, the user stays in control - Own end-to-end: from concept to Figma to working code in production - Ship UI components yourself using Cursor and Claude Code - no waiting for engineering - Untangle the confusing parts of the product - audit IA, redesign navigation, restructure flows that lose users. The dashboard, the create-flow, and the workspace shell are live candidates. - Define the visual identity, design system, and brand language of a product creating a new category - Work directly with founders and engineers - zero handoff, zero layers - Know what NOT to ship - sometimes the right answer is "remove this" or "simpler version," not "redesign." Judgment about what's worth building is part of the role. - Polish what compounds: empty states, loading skeletons, error states, transitions, hover states, focus states, micro-interactions - Own the words inside the product - microcopy, empty-state copy, error messages, onboarding hints, button labels. Words are UX, not decoration. - When we decide to ship feature X, you design it, build it, and merge it. You own it through to production. - Fix what doesn't work YOU MIGHT BE THIS PERSON IF - You have shipped production UI for a real product used by real users - not portfolio pieces - You have an opinion on what good looks like and can defend it without being precious - You care about page performance the way most designers care about typography - You have specific products you point at and say "I want ours to feel like that" - You use Cursor or Claude Code daily and treat AI as core workflow, not novelty - You can drop into an unfamiliar codebase, read it, and find the right place to make a change - You read session replays, support tickets, and customer calls to sharpen your taste - not to outsource it YOU PROBABLY ARE NOT THIS PERSON IF - Figma is your home and you "also implement a bit" - You need design review meetings before pushing - You think performance is engineering's problem - You think "UX" starts and ends with how it looks - You have not shipped to a production app with paying users HARD REQUIREMENTS If any of these is a no → don't apply. - You can show work that is genuinely beautiful and functional - You ship your own designs to production - You use AI tools daily as part of your design workflow (non-negotiable) - You are open to relocate (mandatory) - You can show a real portfolio with shipped products, not just concepts BIG ADD-ONS (NICE TO HAVE) - Active on X / Twitter sharing design work, experiments, or builds - Deep knowledge of motion design, spring animations, and interaction physics - You know who Rauno, Emil Kowalski, or Paco Coursey are - and why their work matters - You've built and shipped your own side projects or products - Background in early-stage startups - you've shaped a product from zero WHAT WE OFFER - Above-average salary for the Italian market - Stock options - you're a founder, not just an employee - Massive growth opportunity in a fast-scaling startup - Small & young team (U25) moving at startup speed - Direct access to founders and real ownership WHAT THIS IS NOT - Not a pixel-pushing factory - you make design decisions, not just mockups - Not a place where designs die in Figma - your designs ship to production, by you - Not a data-driven-everything culture - we trust taste and conviction - Not for people who think AI design tools are "cheating" - Not for people who need a spec before they can start - Not for people who only want to design We play padel, ping pong, and tennis. A lot. Bring your rackets. Show us your portfolio. Show us your shipped products. Show us the details you obsessed over. No fancy degree required. We care about your taste, not your diploma.