Design Engineer

SageOx • Seattle, WA

25d • Onsite

About The Position

SageOx is hiring its second designer to work closely with the Founding Designer as a hands-on builder, rather than joining a design organization or reporting into one. The role is intended for a T-shaped designer with exceptional depth in one area and the ability to contribute across the rest of the product. The designer will challenge the team to think more ambitiously about the experience and then build and ship those ideas.

The role spans SageOx’s web, desktop, mobile, and CLI product; conference-room screens; physical hardware; and an agentic design harness used by AI coworkers. Designers write production code, and designs must be buildable to ship. The work includes end-to-end product design informed by user research and daily use of SageOx, trusted information retrieval and memory experiences, ambient coordination, and onboarding and learning experiences for human–AI collaboration.

For shared screens, the designer will develop legible live meeting experiences, a visual mural that evolves during meetings, and ways for teams to see and steer AI coworkers and shared memory in a room. Hardware work includes the Ox Dot device, whose interaction vocabulary is presence, light, and sound, as well as packaging, unboxing, setup, and pairing. The designer may also lead design patterns for future devices.

The designer will own a code-based design system across these surfaces, including accessible components, tokens, patterns, and states. They will make its documentation, skills, and rules usable by AI coworkers; improve the harness when AI-generated work exposes gaps; create automated checks to detect and prevent design drift; and develop parts of the harness into customer-facing agentic tools, beginning with design walkthrough tooling in the desktop app.

This is an in-person role in Seattle, five days per week. The company may consider select Staff/Principal-level candidates relocating to Seattle, potentially with basic relocation-cost assistance, and may consider a San Francisco-based candidate through the end of 2026 if they work in person in Seattle at least two weeks each month. The hiring process begins with a portfolio assessment. Candidates who pass may be invited to a paid, full-time, 3–5-day in-person work trial in Seattle, with terms agreed up front.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in product design, design engineering, industrial design, design systems, or front-end engineering.
• Demonstrated exceptional depth in at least one area, such as product UX and interaction, hardware and physical product, large-screen and ambient interfaces, or design systems and tooling, with strength across other areas.
• A portfolio demonstrating design judgment and work built by the candidate; applicants should lead with their area of exceptional strength and show what they made, how they made it, and what happened afterward.
• Strong, opinionated design taste and the ability to support opinions with shipped work.
• Evidence of personally building things end to end, such as apps, tools, side projects, home-lab projects, or hardware.
• Daily practical use of Claude Code, Claude Design, or another AI tool stack.
• Experience building something used by AI coworkers, such as a skill, MCP server, lint rule, or generator.
• Technical fluency in a codebase and terminal, with attention to details such as empty states, focus indicators, and error messages.
• Ability to deliver working software, balancing speed and craft, and to edit and systematize work rather than simply produce more.
• Curiosity about technology and the details behind products and interactions.
• Ownership, low ego, ability to make progress with limited resources, comfort with early-stage ambiguity, and openness to new perspectives.
• Belief in the company’s vision of people and AI coworkers working as one team.
• Willingness to work in person in Seattle five days per week; the posting also describes limited in-person arrangements for candidates relocating to Seattle or based in the Bay Area.
• Willingness, if invited after the initial assessment, to participate in a paid, full-time, 3–5-day in-person work trial in Seattle.

Nice To Haves

• Hardware, industrial, or packaging design experience on a product that shipped.
• Experience designing interfaces for large shared screens such as TVs, conference rooms, or signage.
• An engineering background or experience at a developer-tools company.
• Experience designing growth, onboarding, education, or activation.
• Founder or early-employee experience at a fast-growing company.

Responsibilities

• Design and build product features end to end, from user research through shipped implementation, across web, desktop, mobile, and CLI.
• Use SageOx daily and design from lived product experience; talk to users.
• Design trustworthy retrieval experiences for team memory, including the provenance of claims and what an AI coworker has read.
• Create ambient coordination experiences that convey small signals from human and AI coworkers without adding unwanted notifications.
• Design how people begin using SageOx, learn human–AI collaboration, and gain more value over time.
• Design live conference-room screen experiences that are legible from across a room.
• Develop a living visual mural that evolves as a meeting unfolds, and design how people in a room see and steer AI coworkers and team memory.
• Design interactions for the Ox Dot hardware device using presence, light, and sound.
• Design physical-product experiences including packaging, unboxing, first run, and device pairing.
• Establish design patterns for future devices and lead their design builds.
• Own and implement a code-based design system, including accessible components, tokens, patterns, and states across product surfaces.
• Create documentation, skills, and rules that help AI coworkers such as Claude Code follow the design system; identify and close gaps when AI coworkers get things wrong.
• Turn design rules into automated checks, inspect shipped work for drift, codify rules, automate checks, and verify that fixes work.
• Develop parts of the design harness into customer-facing agentic tools, starting with design walkthrough tooling in the desktop app.
• Build and ship production software rather than delivering designs that depend on someone else to implement them.
• Challenge the team to pursue more ambitious experiences and demonstrate ideas through shipped work.
• Take ownership of outcomes and find direction in an early-stage, resource-constrained environment.

Benefits

• Meaningful equity.
• A paid, full-time work trial, with terms agreed up front.
• Potential basic relocation-cost assistance for select Staff/Principal-level candidates relocating to Seattle.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed