Founding Designer (UI/UX)

VideoClaw is a San Francisco applied lab for AI and creativity. Its first product brings prompt-to-video to a Mac app: thousands of AI models, web search, motion graphics, and video editing inside Claude or ChatGPT, using the person's own GPU so the work stays private, cheaper, and smarter. The launch video drew 1.7 million views. The idea is that video is the world's most widely understood language, and few people can speak it. The founding team has built and sold two companies in consumer and media, and one of them built an AI product to about $500,000 in annual revenue alone. Backers include marquee names, named only at the end of the process. Seed stage, about 1 to 10 people, founded in 2026, in San Francisco.

VideoClaw is hiring a founding designer for the product interface. The founder stays the product visionary. What is missing is a designer whose taste can be trusted without approving every screen. Each interface decision still routes through the founder, and that does not scale while the team tests several directions. The question is how to keep the freedom of a prompt box while adding enough guided structure, such as model choices and starting points, that new users do not stall, without the product turning into a rigid template tool.

Day to day you design and prototype competing directions from scratch. You ship screens to the engineers, then check the resulting flows against drop-off and session data. The spike is creative sensitivity: noticing that a gray is off, a shadow is too heavy, or a texture would carry the right feeling, and caring how people feel when they use the product. Data-driven iteration matters, and it is secondary, because the engineers share that load. Leadership needs are light. You brief the engineers and move work forward without the founder in the room. Longer term, the founder wants this person to grow into head of product.

You design the core creation flow end to end. You prototype and test several directions, then pick winners from user flows, session replays, and drop-off. You hold the visual and emotional bar so the founder does not have to approve every screen. You brief the full-stack engineers and iterate with them on a same-day ship cycle. You look outside video software for references that make the product feel different from the category defaults.

Bar: about 3 to 6 years, and at least 2 to 3 years of real UI and product design after school. Internships do not count. Your portfolio shows screens designed from scratch, not only work you vetted or adapted. You have shipped product UI. You are comfortable with AI-assisted design, including Claude connected to Mobbin for interface references. You can give engineers clear direction without being a manager. You track your own work. You are not expected to be a product manager. You use session behavior to check design calls. You have owned screens or flows, not only contributed inside a large team. Prompt-to-create products such as Lovable, Replit, Bolt, and Emergent are the backgrounds they call the closest fit, and Canva design experience counts, especially with a view on where that model is dated. Making video, or an active creator presence, is the north star, and they will pay a premium for it. A design school such as SCAD is a positive signal for work ethic, not a requirement. Interest in growing toward head of product is a plus. Specific talk about color, texture, shadow, and emotional tone, inspiration from outside the category, and a reflex to check replays and data are green flags. Inflated internship scope, a portfolio of mostly templated work, a product-manager orientation with weak craft, taste with no respect for user data, or no real connection to video and creative tools is a miss.

In office in San Francisco at least five days a week. Work authorization covers US citizens and permanent residents, F-1 OPT, and an existing H-1B or O-1 by transfer. A new H-1B or O-1 petition is not workable on this timeline. An O-1 is possible for an exceptional profile, and it is slow. Equity is about 0.1% to 0.2%. Medical, dental, and vision. Posted work intensity is 9-9-6. The process is an initial screening, then a work trial.