Product Designer

Abaka AI•Mountain View, CA

6d•$120,000 - $170,000

About The Position

We're building a new product & software engineering team from the ground up. You'd be one of its first hires, shaping how our products look, feel, and fit together from day one. We're hiring a Product Designer to own the user experience across our web and mobile products. This is not a role where you receive a spec and produce screens. We want someone who asks why, reasons from first principles about what users actually need, and proposes the right solution, even when it isn't the one we asked for. You'll help build our design system: the foundations, components, and patterns that let every product we build feel consistent and intuitive. You'll work directly with engineers and the team lead, with real ownership and a short path from idea to shipped product.

Requirements

1 - 4 years of experience in UI/UX design or a related role, with shipped work you can walk us through.
A portfolio showing both web and mobile product design (responsive web and native iOS/Android patterns).
Strong UX fundamentals: information architecture, interaction design, user flows, and usability.
Strong visual craft: layout, typography, hierarchy, and attention to detail.
Clear evidence of systems thinking: reusable components, patterns, or a design system you built or contributed to.
Fluency in Figma and rapid prototyping.
Ability to explain and defend design decisions to engineers and stakeholders in clear written and spoken English.

Nice To Haves

Experience as an early or founding designer at a startup or on a new team.
Experience with design tokens, theming, and accessibility standards (WCAG).
Ability to prototype in code (HTML/CSS, React) or comfort using AI tools in your design workflow.
Experience designing data-dense or workflow-heavy tools: dashboards, internal tools, marketplaces, or B2B platforms.
Background in AI products, data platforms, or work involving remote expert contributors.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end product design for web and mobile: discovery, user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and polished UI.
Frame problems before solving them. Talk to users, study how they work, and challenge requirements when there's a better answer.
Build our design system from scratch: foundations (color, type, spacing, iconography, tokens) and a shared component library used across products.
Design consistent experiences across our products and platforms, so each new product starts from the system rather than from a blank page.
Partner closely with engineers to ship: prototype quickly, hand off clearly, and review what's built to keep quality high.
Use research, usability testing, and product data to validate decisions and keep improving what's live.
Help shape how the team works: design reviews, critique, and the processes a growing product team needs.