Founding Product Designer
Design the interface between complex AI systems and everyday business owners.
XEO is building an AI-native advertising platform for small businesses. The system underneath XEO is complex: business intelligence, advertising platforms, recommendations, permissions, budgets, approvals, and eventually controlled autonomous actions. The product experience cannot feel complex. We are looking for a hands-on Founding Product Designer who can translate research, product strategy, and technical capability into a simple, understandable, and high-trust product experience. You will work closely with the founder, UX Research / Product Strategy, and engineering.
Role Mission
Turn research and product strategy into a coherent, intuitive, and production-ready product experience.
You are not joining to run the primary research function. You are joining to design the product based on research evidence.
What you will own
- Product UX
- Information architecture
- User flows
- Wireframes
- Interaction design
- High-fidelity UI
- Product prototypes
- Responsive product design
- Design system
- Component behavior
- Complex product states
- AI recommendation interfaces
- Approval flows
- Permissions UX
- Advertising budget controls
- Campaign setup flows
- Error / recovery states
- Empty states
- Progressive disclosure
- Mobile and desktop product behavior
What we are looking for
- Strong product UX judgment
- Excellent interaction design
- Ability to simplify complex systems
- High-quality Figma execution
- Experience designing SaaS or complex product interfaces
- Ability to build clear information architecture
- Strong understanding of product states
- Ability to design trust-sensitive workflows
- Strong prototyping skills
- Understanding of responsive product design
- Comfort working directly with engineers
- Comfort working from incomplete requirements
- Fast iteration
- Strong written and visual communication
Bonus experience
- AI product experience
- Fintech / payments / advertising UX
- B2B SaaS
- SMB products
- Workflow tools
- Design systems
- Agentic product UX
- Complex permission systems
- Financial or high-trust product interfaces
Research and product design are separate functions
XEO's UX Research / Product Strategy function owns customer discovery, behavioral research, usability research, and product insight.
As Founding Product Designer, you will turn those findings into product experiences.
- Research Insight
- Product Requirement
- User Flow
- Wireframe
- High-Fidelity Prototype
- Usability Test
- Iteration
- Engineering Implementation
You should be comfortable participating in research and usability sessions, but you are not expected to build the research function yourself.
Core design challenges
- How should XEO explain what it knows about a business?
- How should users understand what the AI recommends and why?
- How do we visually distinguish recommendation, approval required and autonomous action?
- How should advertising budget limits be shown?
- How does a user understand what XEO is allowed to do?
- How should confidence and uncertainty be communicated?
- How do we make advanced advertising functionality accessible to someone who has never run an ad campaign?
- How do we support advanced users without making the product overwhelming for beginners?
- How should XEO recover visually from failed integrations or failed campaign actions?
- How should users understand what happened after an action was taken?
What this role is not
This is not primarily:
- Brand design
- Social media design
- Marketing graphics
- Illustration
- Logo design
- Presentation design
- Pure visual design
- A research-only role
Strong visual craft matters, but this is fundamentally a product design role.
Early-stage expectations
This is a founding-stage role. You should be comfortable with:
- Ambiguity
- Incomplete requirements
- Direct founder collaboration
- A small team
- Rapid iteration
- Making decisions without large-company infrastructure
- Owning work end-to-end
- Building systems from zero
- Working closely with engineering
- Testing ideas before they are fully polished
Potential first 90 days
- Map the core XEO product architecture into clear user flows
- Design onboarding
- Design business-context setup
- Design campaign creation
- Design recommendation states
- Design approval flows
- Design permissions and autonomy controls
- Design budget-control UI
- Create core component patterns
- Establish the first production design system
- Work with UX research to test prototypes with SMB users
- Iterate based on real research findings
- Prepare production-ready Figma specs for engineering
- Define core interaction patterns for AI-driven actions
- Establish consistent error, loading, empty, approval, and recovery states
We are looking for a product designer, not a screen decorator.
Company stage & compensation
This is an early-stage, pre-funding opportunity. Cash compensation is expected following successful financing and formal company formation, subject to a separately agreed compensation arrangement. Equity terms, if offered, are determined individually based on role, experience, commitment and long-term involvement. Nothing here is a guarantee of compensation, equity or engagement.
Apply for Founding Product Designer
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