Design Engineer, SimplyCodes

You draw the screen and ship it the same day. Partnering directly with our Founding Designer and the founder to set and raise the consumer design bar, you own the design and production code of SimplyCodes and our /shop Design Record components end to end.

Product.ai is the verification layer for commerce: when a person or an AI agent needs to know what's actually true about a purchase, we answer with proof. SimplyCodes is the first proof at scale, the code verification service, at ~$22M a year in revenue. Profitable. Founder-owned since 2009, bootstrapped, no outside investors, no board. Fewer than twenty operators.

Why This Role Exists

We are shipping consumer trust surfaces at high velocity: the SimplyCodes merchant landing pages, website, and browser extension that millions of shoppers use every day, alongside our /shop Verification Checker (where shoppers paste what an AI, an article, a brand page, or a friend told them to buy, and we grade the claims inside it across five verification states for free while AI shopping agents pay per call for verified commerce truth).

We need a builder who already thinks in both design and code, has a real human-computer interaction background, is fluent with the AI tools that accelerate both, and wants to own consumer interfaces end to end. You partner directly with our Founding Designer and the founder to set and raise the consumer design bar across SimplyCodes and our shared design system.

The part that makes this different from a traditional frontend or design role: our design system is executable law, not a static Figma library. Its tokens, motion physics, and components are read directly by the coding agents that generate our interfaces, so precision in the design system translates directly into quality in production. Owning that machine-readable design layer and shipping live production interfaces end to end is the core of the seat.

The System You'll Need to Model

• SimplyCodes and the Verification Checker as consumer trust surfaces. The SimplyCodes code-verification and merchant pages earn ~$22M a year in revenue, and our consumer Verification Checker grades shopping claims across five verification states. Visual clarity, state transitions, and perceived speed directly drive consumer trust and revenue.
• Pages built for two readers at once. A shopper deciding whether to trust a verified code or claim, and the search engine that finds and ranks the page before any person sees it.
• A design system agents build inside. Tokens, a component catalog, and usage rules precise enough that coding agents generating a screen stay within the bar automatically. You co-own that machine-readable design record in code.
• Prototypes that are the real thing. The design-to-engineering handoff is gone here. A direction is explored as a working prototype in a design tool and in production React/CSS in the same session, and the winners ship live.
• Decision-shaped interfaces. The unit of every screen here is a verified claim or code and how sure we are that it works. Confidence has to render credibly, never oversold and never buried — motion physics, state, and typography doing trust work.
• Cortex, the shared AI brain the company runs on. You work inside it daily, directing coding agents as force multipliers the way our founder does, and since August any operator here can change the rules the company runs on, live, without waiting on founder approval.

If reading that energizes you, keep going. If it feels overwhelming or underspecified, this isn't the right fit.

What You Will Own

• SimplyCodes and consumer surfaces, design and code, end to end. The code-verification pages, merchant landing pages, website, and shared consumer components — partnering directly with our Founding Designer and the founder to set and raise the consumer design bar and ship live production interfaces.
• The design system and /shop Design Record in code. The tokens, components, motion physics, and rules our coding agents build inside, kept precise, documented, and current. When a generated screen misses the bar, you upgrade the component system and gates so the whole platform levels up.
• Working prototypes and shipped components. Directions taken from a sketch or interactive rig to production React and CSS without waiting for a handoff in either direction.
• The polish and motion layer. Motion physics, micro-interactions, state transitions, spacing, and typography: the decisions that make a verification interface feel unmistakable and trustworthy.
• Your seat charter. Within your first quarter you co-sign a charter for this seat. It names one machine-checkable number that proves the seat is working, and a high-ownership partnership model with our Founding Designer and the founder.

The craft you must already own: a real human-computer interaction background, not a gloss of design vocabulary; a very strong design eye, proven by a live portfolio of shipped work; building production interfaces in React, TypeScript, and CSS; fluency in Figma; and AI coding and design tools as force multipliers you verify by hand. A bonus, not a requirement: SEO experience — understanding how search-aware design compounds discovery on high-traffic consumer pages.

Comparable experience we accept: a frontend or design engineer with real design taste and an HCI background, a product designer who ships production React/CSS code, or a builder who designed and shipped a consumer product end to end.

Who You Are

How you think. You see a screen as a living system: what state it's in, what it's telling the person, and where friction hides. You think about the shopper on the other side of the screen from first principles — what they're trying to decide, what they perceive first, and how typography, layout, and motion earn their trust.

How you work. A design tool, a coding agent, and a browser open together, most of the day. You use AI tools as force multipliers for both design and code, and you verify every detail because you can build it by hand.

What you've probably built. Real interfaces people used, that you can show live and explain what you decided and why. A product or component system you designed and built yourself counts fully. Years matter less than the artifact, and your portfolio is more important than your resume.

Who this isn't for. This is wrong if you want to be handed finished designs to implement or finished code to style; here you own both halves end to end. It's wrong if you want a slow, layered agency hierarchy; here you partner directly with our Founding Designer and the founder and ship to millions of shoppers. You'll be happiest here if you want to build at a founder-level craft bar where your work reaches real shoppers every day.

How We Hire

We don't run traditional design or engineering interviews.

1. Async video screen (or Fast-Track Portfolio/GitHub review). About 15 minutes, on your own time, replacing the recruiter screen — or, if you have a standout live portfolio of shipped interactive work and GitHub repos, share those links directly on your application to fast-track straight to our stakeholder and founder conversations.
2. Calls with company stakeholders. Short conversations with the people you'd build beside, including our Founding Designer.
3. Conversation with the founder. How you see a screen, how you use your tools, and what you'd elevate first across SimplyCodes and /shop.
4. Paid work trial (PRJ-75). A paid real-work trial in our environment: taking a live consumer verification component or SimplyCodes screen from design direction to shipped production React/CSS inside our design system. We look for visual taste, interaction physics, how you use AI tools as force multipliers, and how we collaborate together.

If the work above sounds like yours but your resume is unconventional, apply anyway. We hire on the work and the reasoning, not the pedigree.

Compensation & Ownership

Total first-year comp: $190,000 to $230,000 (base + performance-based PIU ownership and profit-share program). Base: $150,000 to $170,000.

Product.ai is a profitable, founder-owned company generating ~$22M a year in revenue with zero venture debt. Beyond base salary, operators participate in our Profit Interest Unit (PIU) ownership and profit-share program ($0 strike price units that share directly in annual free-cash-flow distributions and annual company tender liquidity, earned on performance milestones). Grants are performance-based and earned after joining, never day-one vesting, with formal terms governed by the plan documents at the offer stage; 100% family premium coverage; and an effectively unlimited token budget, steered by return, never capped.

Based in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, on our high-trust hybrid rhythm: four focused in-office half-days together (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 9am to 2pm), with Wednesdays open for deep work and afternoons yours to work from wherever you do your best work. Relocation support available for the right builder.