Staff AI Designer
Role Overview
We’re looking for a Staff AI Product Designer to shape what our AI does, how it behaves, and how it fits into real user workflows.
This role sits at the intersection of product, design, and machine learning—turning emerging capabilities into reliable, high-quality user experiences. You’ll design systems: behaviors, decisions, orchestration, and end-to-end experiences powered by AI.
This is not a traditional product design role. You’ll go beyond interface design to define how AI systems behave, operate, and deliver value in the real world—similar to emerging “AI Model Designer” roles, but more deeply embedded in product.
What You’ll Do
1. Define AI capabilities (the “what and why”)
Identify and pattern match high-value opportunities for AI across the product
Define what AI should do—and just as importantly, what it should not do, making hard or unpopular calls when needed
Set clear boundaries for autonomy vs human control
2. Design AI behavior, orchestration, and system logic
Architect AI-driven workflows and agentic systems that operate across real-world scenarios and over time, including multi-step and agent-to-agent interactions
Establish decision frameworks: when systems should act, ask, escalate, or defer
Design for uncertainty, failures, and edge cases as core system behavior
Develop and apply design principles and heuristics to shape how AI systems behave and make decisions
Ensure systems remain coherent and predictable, even as complexity scales
3. Shape human + AI workflows and end-to-end experience
Design experiences for users who are increasingly managing AI systems and agents
Design how AI integrates into real user workflows, not just isolated interactions
Define the role of the human in the loop: where users guide, review, or override
Ensure users can understand, trust, and recover from system failures
Partner with product designers to continuously shape and adapt the product experience as underlying systems evolve
4. Define quality, evaluation, and reliability
Define what “good” looks like (e.g. trust, accuracy, effort reduction, and whether outputs are structured and usable in context)
Design evaluation scenarios and feedback loops
Analyse outputs to identify failure modes and system weaknesses
Design for reliability at the system level, preventing agentic breakdowns
How You’ll Work
Shape direction from the earliest stages of zero-to-one problems
Influence across teams without formal authority
Operate in a highly autonomous, fast-moving environment with evolving constraints
Lead ambiguous, in-flight work—making calls on when to adapt the product vs. push on system improvements as things evolve
Act as a bridge between AI research, technical capabilities, and user needs
Collaborate deeply with ML scientists, PMs, and product designers
Prototype and run focused experiments that isolate variables and generate clear insights
Stay close to system behaviour by regularly reviewing outputs and raising the bar on quality
What We’re Looking For
Strong product judgment—you consistently make high-quality calls on what to build and why
Ability to influence without authority
Experience working on zero-to-one products and comfort operating through ambiguity and rapid change
Deep understanding of LLMs and their limitations, along with a grounding in traditional ML approaches and when to use them instead
Experience defining design principles, heuristics, or evaluation criteria for AI systems
High standards for quality, with a track record of identifying where AI systems break down in real-world use
A scientific mindset—you can design experiments that isolate variables and produce meaningful insights
Systems thinker: you’re happier designing behaviours and flows than polishing interfaces
We’re open to non-traditional backgrounds (e.g. product managers, engineers, or others) if you have strong product sense and a track record of representing user needs in technical systems
What This Role Is Not
You will not be training models or building ML infrastructure
You will not be responsible for backend architecture or performance optimisation
You will only occasionally design UI—this is not the focus of the role
You will influence all of these—but your primary responsibility is defining what should be built, how it should behave, and how it performs in the real world.
Why This Role Is Compelling
You’ll join a mature AI discipline operating at the frontier. Fin already has an established AI Design team and strong cross-functional understanding of this role, so you can focus on building rather than justifying your value.
You won’t be “adding AI to a product.” The quality of our AI is the quality of our product. This is a technical, hands-on role where you have the satisfaction of working with tight feedback loops.
You’ll shape product direction, not just execution. You’ll operate upstream in a high-autonomy environment with real ownership over outcomes.
Benefits
We are a well treated bunch, with awesome benefits! If there’s something important to you that’s not on this list, talk to us!
Competitive salary and equity in a fast-growing start-up
We serve lunch every weekday, plus a variety of snack foods and a fully stocked kitchen
Regular compensation reviews - we reward great work!
Unlimited access to Claude Code and best-in-class AI tools; experimentation & building is encouraged & celebrated.
Pension scheme & match up to 4%
Peace of mind with life assurance, as well as comprehensive health and dental insurance for you and your dependents
Flexible paid time off policy
Paid maternity leave, as well as 6 weeks paternity leave for fathers, to let you spend valuable time with your loved ones
If you’re cycling, we’ve got you covered on the Cycle-to-Work Scheme. With secure bike storage too
MacBooks are our standard, but we also offer Windows for certain roles when needed.
#LI-Hybrid
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