Staff Designer, Rapid Prototyping

Posted 2 days ago

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About the role

  • Staff Designer building prototypes and front-end experiences for Thunderbird’s open-source Thunderbolt AI client. Shaping trustworthy, accessible, enterprise-ready workflows and reusable interaction patterns.

Responsibilities

  • Build functional prototypes and product experiments directly in the Thunderbolt codebase.
  • Translate ambiguous product ideas, user workflows, partner feedback, and enterprise needs into clear, usable product experiences.
  • Define interaction patterns for AI-powered chat, search, research, workflow automation, knowledge retrieval, and enterprise administration.
  • Use AI-assisted development tools to accelerate prototyping and implementation while maintaining quality, usability, security, accessibility, and maintainability.
  • Partner with product, design, engineering, enterprise-facing teams, contractors, and external contributors to explore, validate, and refine product direction.
  • Contribute production-quality front-end code where appropriate.
  • Determine whether prototypes should be discarded, refined, generalized, or productionized.
  • Improve usability, accessibility, consistency, and polish of the Thunderbolt user experience.
  • Develop reusable components, interface patterns, or design-system elements.
  • Bring a user-centered perspective to technical and product discussions involving AI behavior, trust, transparency, permissions, or workflow clarity.
  • Design for enterprise needs including data sensitivity, user control, administrative visibility, auditability, and security expectations.
  • Help Thunderbolt, an open-source AI client for organizations, move from early workflows into clear, trustworthy, enterprise-ready product experiences.

Requirements

  • 10+ years of relevant experience in design engineering, front-end engineering, UX engineering, product design with strong technical implementation experience, or a closely related role, with demonstrated leadership and impact beyond individual deliverables.
  • Strong front-end engineering skills, including experience with modern JavaScript or TypeScript, component-based frameworks, and building prototypes or production features directly in an application codebase.
  • Strong product and interaction design judgment, including usability, accessibility, information architecture, workflow design, and product polish.
  • Experience designing, prototyping, or building AI-enabled product experiences, such as chat, search, research tools, agents, automation, knowledge interfaces, or workflow tools where user trust, context, output quality, and human oversight are central to the experience.
  • Experience translating ambiguous product concepts into usable workflows, prototypes, and shipped product experiences, with the judgment to balance speed, quality, maintainability, learning, and product risk.
  • Experience providing technical or product leadership through mentoring, cross-functional coordination, reusable patterns, project ownership, or influence beyond individual deliverables.
  • Practical awareness of AI, privacy, security, and regulatory considerations, including transparency, user control, permissions, data handling, and trust; familiarity with frameworks such as the EU AI Act, Cyber Resilience Act, HIPAA, or comparable requirements.
  • Strong communication and collaboration skills with product managers, designers, engineers, and other cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Portfolio, case studies, shipped work, or examples demonstrating design-to-code execution, interactive prototypes, or product experience improvements.
  • Applicants must reside in Canada and have permanent work authorization; visa sponsorship is not provided.

Benefits

  • Fully remote work & schedule flexibility
  • Company-provided laptop
  • Annual bonus program
  • Monthly remote work stipend
  • Annual professional development stipend
  • Access to Coursera learning platform
  • Industry conferences
  • Company all-hands and team gatherings
  • 24 days PTO per year (prorated)
  • Your birthday
  • Year-end company shutdown
  • 9 wellbeing days
  • Public holidays
  • Other paid leave
  • Quarterly wellbeing stipend for personal / family activities
  • RRSP contributions
  • Health, dental, & vision insurance
  • Disability insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Employee assistance program
  • Paid parental leave
  • Paid sick days

Job title

Job type

Full Time

Experience level

Lead

Salary

CA$155,000 - CA$175,000 per year

Degree requirement

No Education Requirement

Tech skills

JavaScriptTypeScript

Location requirements

RemoteCanada

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