Product Designer (UI/UX)

Urban Ridge Supplies•New York, NY

17h•$90,000 - $210,000•Onsite

About The Position

Ajaia is hiring a hands-on Product Designer to lead discovery and design for client engagements and Ajaia’s own product suite. The role involves speaking with and observing people doing the work, turning research into user journeys, wireframes, and prototypes engineers can build from, and testing designs with real users before production code is written. The designer will set and maintain the design standard across Ajaia’s products and stay involved during implementation to help ensure the delivered product matches the design intent. AI tools are a core part of the role and are used daily to support research, synthesis, and prototyping. The designer is expected to assess AI-generated work critically, keep designs grounded in user evidence, and know when to refine or rebuild AI-produced output. The role is on-site in New York and includes travel to client sites for discovery work.

Requirements

Experience conducting discovery independently, including interviews, usability testing, and analysis of behavioral data.
Ability to move quickly from research synthesis to a working prototype.
Ability to design human checkpoints into workflows.
Comfort presenting and defending evidence-based conclusions when they differ from stakeholder expectations.
Daily use of AI for research, synthesis, and prototyping, with the ability to assess output quality.
Comfort working directly with engineers throughout development.
On-site work in New York and travel to client sites for discovery work.
No minimum years of experience required; candidates are evaluated on their work.

Nice To Haves

A public portfolio or case studies available before an interview.
Experience designing AI-native workflows, including determining where human checkpoints belong.
Consulting, agency, or professional services experience with concurrent clients.
Comfort with lightweight front-end implementation.
A bachelor's degree is preferred but not required.

Responsibilities

Run discovery for client engagements by interviewing and observing people doing the work, identifying gaps between what they report and what they do.
Conduct research with users of Ajaia’s own products.
Synthesize research into evidence-backed user needs, distinguishing them from users’ stated requests.
Design user journeys, wireframes, and prototypes that engineers can build from without guesswork.
Identify and design human approval checkpoints within workflows.
Test designs with real users before production code is written.
Challenge stakeholder feature requests when user evidence supports a different direction, and explain the rationale in actionable terms.
Maintain design standards across Ajaia’s product suite.
Use AI tools by default for prototyping and assess when AI-native workflows save time versus when output needs to be rebuilt or refined.
Hand off implementation-ready design work and remain involved during development to catch deviations from design intent.