Product Designer/Sr. Product Designer

Job description

ABOUT US Most of the molecules driving human biology are invisible to us. Mass spectrometers already detect metabolites, lipids, and peptides, but the vast majority of those signals never get identified. A typical experiment names a small fraction of its features and discards the rest. We call this biology's dark matter. It’s signal-rich and mechanism-defining, yet almost entirely opaque. Matterworks is building the foundation models that make that dark matter legible. Our Large Spectral Models do for biochemical biology what AlphaFold and ESM did for proteins: turning a library-bound discipline into something predictable and generative, and embedding it at every stage of R&D. Come build the future of biological discovery with us. POSITION OVERVIEW As a Product Designer/Sr. Product Designer at Matterworks, you will shape how scientists interact with Pyxis, our application layer for foundation models of biochemical data. The role spans two design challenges: shipping end-to-end product work in our core web application, and helping us invent the patterns that make our models accessible across emerging surfaces, including our MCP connector and other agentic interfaces. The conventions for how scientists work with AI-native tools in biology don't fully exist yet. You'll help us define them. We're hiring at the Product Designer or Senior Product Designer level. This is a part-time contract role at roughly 20 hours per week. The initial engagement runs 3 months, with potential to extend or convert to full-time as we scale. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES - Iterate at high velocity: Produce dozens of design explorations through sketching, Figma, and coded prototypes in tools like Claude and v0. - Craft beautiful final designs: Bring final work to a high bar of polish in typography, hierarchy, and interaction. - Build reusable components: Turn recurring patterns into components that compose across the web app, MCP, and agentic surfaces. - Understand users deeply: Stay close to scientists through user interviews, customer calls, and session replay reviews. - Collaborate across the team: Work with PM, engineers, and scientists to align on user needs and tradeoffs. QUALIFICATIONS We care more about portfolio depth than years of experience. Typical Product Designer candidates have 3+ years; Senior Product Designer candidates have 6+, with significant time in a senior IC role. - A portfolio that demonstrates end-to-end ownership of complex product surfaces alongside systems thinking (reusable patterns, components, or design primitives). Please include a portfolio link with your application. - Genuine love for the craft of design. You sweat the details because you can't help yourself, study products you admire, and find joy in the work itself. - Strong self-direction. You can take a brief, run with it independently, and come back with credible progress without close supervision. - Experience designing data-dense interfaces (tables, plots, dashboards). - Curiosity about scientific domains. You don't need a biology background, but you should be excited to learn about mass spectrometry, omics, and the workflows of lab scientists. - Comfort pairing with engineers through implementation, not just at handoff. - Comfort with ambiguity and a bias for shipping. You'd rather get something in front of users in a day and iterate than design in isolation for a week. - Fluency in Figma, rapid-prototyping tools (Claude, v0, Cursor, or similar), and clear written communication. - Experience designing AI-powered, agentic, or model-driven products is a plus, especially work that spans multiple surfaces or modalities. WORKING AT MATTERWORKS Given the cross-disciplinary and innovative nature of our work, effective collaboration and communication are critical to our progress. We operate in a flexible hybrid model that accommodates both fully remote team members and those who work full-time from our Somerville, MA office. While some positions may require regular in-person presence for hands-on work or local collaboration, many roles can be performed remotely with team members distributed across various locations. COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS Matterworks offers full-time employees a competitive base salary, stock options, and benefits (health & dental, vision, long- and short-term disability, life insurance, 401k with company match). Employees enjoy a flexible work & unlimited time away policy, commuter benefits and parking, regular team meals and outings, and company support for continued education/coursework and conference participation. Matterworks, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All candidates for employment at Matterworks are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by law.