Design Research Engineer

Taste Labs • San Francisco, CA

4h • Remote

About The Position

Taste Labs is building the data and infrastructure layer for taste. Our goal is to end AI slop. To make AI feel right, not just be correct. We raised $18.5M in seed co-led by Amplify and CRV, and most frontier labs are already customers. AI has nailed objective domains and can generate anything. The hard part left is judgement: what fits, what feels like you, what's actually GREAT. We're turning that into something measurable, starting with design. We do it on two sides: building the post-training data and RL environments that teach taste to frontier models, and the context and verification tools agents need to produce work that's more creative, more on-brand, more right. If that problem excites you, you'll like it here! This is not a typical design role. At Taste, design is the product. You will help to decode the fuzzy problem of what “great” means in design and have this wisdom feed into interfaces, eval design, and crafting products with our engineering and research teams. You will spend more of your day in code or with researchers than you will in Figma. If you’re curious, have an absurdly high bar for quality and are AI pilled, this is for you.

Requirements

• Amazing taste: honed taste for years, opinionated, wide references, ability to separate personal preference vs. ground truth.
• Deeply curious and think like a researcher.
• AI forward: tinker with AI tools, use claude code/cursor/codex, ship design in code.
• Great at collaborating with others across design, product, research, engineering, customers.

Nice To Haves

• Worked in creative technology companies.
• Worked in research labs.
• Did personal projects on the subject of taste in design.

Responsibilities

• Decode the fuzzy problem of what “great” means in design.
• Feed design wisdom into interfaces, eval design, and crafting products with engineering and research teams.
• Spend more time in code or with researchers than in Figma.
• Think about questions such as: What is creativity? How do we break down components of creativity? What leads to great and bad visual design? How can this be turned into an eval? What are creative, interesting ways we can collect data? How do we classify design styles? What is the best interface to collect designer feedback on their reasoning behind why they love or hate a particular design? What are fundamentals of typography, color, layout, alignment? How do I make this measurable? How would I develop a framework around what “great design” means? What is AI slop? How can I spot it?

What This Job Offers

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