Founding Design Engineer

We're building Vibiz.ai http://Vibiz.ai, the first Autonomous Company Platform.

We're VC-backed, have hundreds of paying customers, and we're building an AI agent that autonomously runs and grows businesses - spending budget, making decisions, executing actions, and driving real results.

We're looking for a Founding Design Engineer who has taste, builds beautiful things, thinks analytically when needed, and ships them into production.

Your job is to make the product feel obvious - so that our users can move fast and trust what they see.

What You'll DO

• Design and build agentic interfaces that feel magical - the AI does the work, the user stays in control

• Own end-to-end: from concept to Figma to working code in production

• Ship UI components yourself using Cursor and Claude Code - no waiting for engineering

• Untangle the confusing parts of the product - audit IA, redesign navigation, restructure flows that lose users. The dashboard, the create-flow, and the workspace shell are live candidates.

• Define the visual identity, design system, and brand language of a product creating a new category

• Work directly with founders and engineers - zero handoff, zero layers

• Know what NOT to ship - sometimes the right answer is "remove this" or "simpler version," not "redesign." Judgment about what's worth building is part of the role.

• Polish what compounds: empty states, loading skeletons, error states, transitions, hover states, focus states, micro-interactions

• Own the words inside the product - microcopy, empty-state copy, error messages, onboarding hints, button labels. Words are UX, not decoration.

• When we decide to ship feature X, you design it, build it, and merge it. You own it through to production.

• Fix what doesn't work

YOU Might BE This Person IF

• You have shipped production UI for a real product used by real users - not portfolio pieces

• You have an opinion on what good looks like and can defend it without being precious

• You care about page performance the way most designers care about typography

• You have specific products you point at and say "I want ours to feel like that"

• You use Cursor or Claude Code daily and treat AI as core workflow, not novelty

• You can drop into an unfamiliar codebase, read it, and find the right place to make a change

• You read session replays, support tickets, and customer calls to sharpen your taste - not to outsource it

YOU PROBABLY ARE NOT THIS PERSON IF

• Figma is your home and you "also implement a bit"

• You need design review meetings before pushing

• You think performance is engineering's problem

• You think "UX" starts and ends with how it looks

• You have not shipped to a production app with paying users

HARD REQUIREMENTS

If any of these is a no → don't apply.

• You can show work that is genuinely beautiful and functional

• You ship your own designs to production

• You use AI tools daily as part of your design workflow (non-negotiable)

• You are open to relocate (mandatory)

• You can show a real portfolio with shipped products, not just concepts

BIG ADD-ONS (NICE TO HAVE)

• Active on X / Twitter sharing design work, experiments, or builds

• Deep knowledge of motion design, spring animations, and interaction physics

• You know who Rauno, Emil Kowalski, or Paco Coursey are - and why their work matters

• You've built and shipped your own side projects or products

• Background in early-stage startups - you've shaped a product from zero

What WE Offer

• Above-average salary for the Italian market

• Stock options - you're a founder, not just an employee

• Massive growth opportunity in a fast-scaling startup

• Small & young team (U25) moving at startup speed

• Direct access to founders and real ownership

• WHAT THIS IS NOT

• Not a pixel-pushing factory - you make design decisions, not just mockups

• Not a place where designs die in Figma - your designs ship to production, by you

• Not a data-driven-everything culture - we trust taste and conviction

• Not for people who think AI design tools are "cheating"

• Not for people who need a spec before they can start

• Not for people who only want to design

• We play padel, ping pong, and tennis. A lot. Bring your rackets.

• Show us your portfolio. Show us your shipped products. Show us the details you obsessed over.

• No fancy degree required. We care about your taste, not your diploma.