Staff Product Designer

Vitalize•San Francisco, CA

19h•$230,000 - $250,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Vitalize is building the AI operating system for how health systems manage labor and capacity. The impact is real: we save hospitals millions in unnecessary labor spend, give clinical leaders back 10–20 hours every week, and are often the reason staff and leaders stay. We’re trusted by leading health systems across the country and have raised more than $31M from top healthcare and technology investors, including our own customers. Design at Vitalize is grounded in a deep understanding of the people and systems that power healthcare. We spend time in hospitals, learn how work happens from the frontline to the C-suite, and use those insights to design products that make complex operational decisions easier. We care deeply about craft, but we believe great design starts with getting the workflow right—not just the interface. As a small team, we work closely with Product and Engineering, share work early, challenge each other’s thinking, and stay close to the customers using what we build. You’ll be the third product designer at Vitalize, joining at a stage where you’ll help define not just what we build, but how we design. You’ll set the design direction for our most complex and strategic product areas, partnering closely with product and engineering leadership to turn ambiguous, high-stakes problems into clear, intuitive experiences. We want design at Vitalize to be AI-first, and we’ll be honest: we’re not there yet. We’ve started using AI for early exploration and prototyping, but we don’t have a consistent workflow or clear best practices. A big part of this role is changing that. You’ll help define what an AI-first design process looks like here: how we use AI to explore more ideas, prototype faster, and get to real customer feedback sooner, without lowering the craft bar. You’ll also shape how AI shows up in the product itself, design across data-dense, AI-powered workflows, lead the evolution of our design system, and set a consistently high bar for everything we ship as Vitalize scales.

Requirements

8+ years of product design experience, including significant time designing complex, workflow-heavy B2B SaaS products, with a portfolio that shows end-to-end ownership of high-impact, ambiguous problems, from problem definition through shipped product and measurable outcomes
An AI-first design workflow you can teach: AI is already central to how you design, you have a clear point of view on where it speeds up the process, where it falls short, and how to keep quality high, and you’re excited to help a team build that muscle
Experience designing AI-powered products: you’ve shipped experiences where AI makes recommendations or takes action, and you think carefully about trust, transparency, and when a human should stay in the loop
Exceptional product instincts and craft: you look beyond the immediate UI, challenge whether the workflow itself is right, and turn complicated systems into experiences that feel simple
Strategic influence: you set direction, not just respond to requests, and can align product, engineering, and leadership around a design vision backed by evidence
A customer- and outcomes-oriented mindset: you’re comfortable in hospitals observing operational workflows firsthand, and you connect your work to measurable impact for customers and the business
Design systems leadership: you’ve built or led the evolution of a design system and know how to balance consistency with the speed of an early-stage company
A multiplier on the team: you’ve mentored designers, raised the craft bar through critique, and shaped how a design team works, and you’re excited to stay hands-on while helping build the function

Responsibilities

Build our AI-first design workflow: figure out how AI fits into every stage of our design process, from exploration and prototyping to production. Set the best practices, workflows, and quality standards the team adopts
Lead by example: use AI daily to explore, prototype, and test ideas quickly, then bring the strongest directions to production quality
Set design direction across the product: lead design for our most complex, cross-cutting product areas from discovery through launch, and shape the long-term product vision alongside Product and Engineering leadership
Design complex, workflow-heavy experiences: make data-dense operational tools intuitive for users ranging from central staffing teams and unit managers to frontline clinicians
Shape how AI shows up in the product: decide where AI meaningfully improves workflows and how its recommendations, reasoning, and actions appear, so clinical and operational users can trust and act on them
Work directly with customers: visit hospitals, observe real workflows, lead research, and translate what you learn into product decisions and strategy
Influence the roadmap: question the underlying workflow, find opportunities beyond the immediate request, and connect design decisions to customer and business outcomes
Raise the bar for the whole team: mentor other designers, lead critique, and build the practices, rituals, and quality standards that help a small design team do exceptional work