Senior Level Founding Designer Jobs
Senior level founding designer jobs put experienced designers in charge of product vision, design systems, and the cross-functional teams that bring them to life. Roles concentrate in Technology & Software, Education, and Sports & Recreation, with 38% remote or hybrid availability, and employers like Giga, MERCOR, and SERVAL hiring at this level now.
Find JobsOverview
Showing 5 of 9+ Senior Level Founding Designer jobs
Founding Technical Product Manager - Physics AI Startup - San Francisco - Up to $350k + equity
Get in early at the company building foundation models for physics. Engineering simulation is one of the last big software categories AI has not rebuilt. Aircraft, ships and reservoirs are still designed with solvers that are decades old, and an engineer can wait a full day for one answer. This company’s foundation models learn physics directly from data and are already running in early deployments for some of the largest industrial and defense organizations in the world. The backing includes some of the biggest names in V.
You would be the first Technical Product Manager, owning the core platform from 0 to 1. The product takes a raw geometry and returns physics-consistent results in seconds, replacing solvers that take hours or days. You decide how engineers use it across the web UI, API, CLI and CAD integrations. You report to the CEO and work alongside a team of 30 researchers and engineers, most of them PhDs. Day to day, you sit between ML researchers, physics experts and demanding enterprise customers in defense, aerospace, maritime and energy. You turn their bottlenecks into precise product requirements and shape the roadmap, including deployments that serious customers insist on, such as on-premise and air-gapped environments.
This is a good fit if you come from either a defense or aerospace background or a physics simulation startup. That is a requirement, not a nice-to-have. You have hands-on simulation experience. Ideally you started as a CFD, FEA or other simulation engineer, or worked in an adjacent role such as meshing, CAD automation or simulation software, and then moved into product. You have lived the pain of slow solvers and manual workflows, so you know what engineers actually need. You have taken a highly technical product from nothing to something in an early-stage startup, are comfortable with APIs and cloud infrastructure, and can hold your own with PhD researchers. Experience selling into defense and other regulated environments puts you ahead.
The office is in San Francisco, five days a week. The equity is real, the access to the CEO is direct, and the product is still being defined. Ready to build something that actually matters? Apply now.
Founding Technical Product Manager - Physics AI Startup - San Francisco - Up to $350k + equity
Get in early at the company building foundation models for physics. Engineering simulation is one of the last big software categories AI has not rebuilt. Aircraft, ships and reservoirs are still designed with solvers that are decades old, and an engineer can wait a full day for one answer. This company’s foundation models learn physics directly from data and are already running in early deployments for some of the largest industrial and defense organizations in the world. The backing includes some of the biggest names in V.
You would be the first Technical Product Manager, owning the core platform from 0 to 1. The product takes a raw geometry and returns physics-consistent results in seconds, replacing solvers that take hours or days. You decide how engineers use it across the web UI, API, CLI and CAD integrations. You report to the CEO and work alongside a team of 30 researchers and engineers, most of them PhDs. Day to day, you sit between ML researchers, physics experts and demanding enterprise customers in defense, aerospace, maritime and energy. You turn their bottlenecks into precise product requirements and shape the roadmap, including deployments that serious customers insist on, such as on-premise and air-gapped environments.
This is a good fit if you come from either a defense or aerospace background or a physics simulation startup. That is a requirement, not a nice-to-have. You have hands-on simulation experience. Ideally you started as a CFD, FEA or other simulation engineer, or worked in an adjacent role such as meshing, CAD automation or simulation software, and then moved into product. You have lived the pain of slow solvers and manual workflows, so you know what engineers actually need. You have taken a highly technical product from nothing to something in an early-stage startup, are comfortable with APIs and cloud infrastructure, and can hold your own with PhD researchers. Experience selling into defense and other regulated environments puts you ahead.
The office is in San Francisco, five days a week. The equity is real, the access to the CEO is direct, and the product is still being defined. Ready to build something that actually matters? Apply now.
See All 9 Senior Level Founding Designer Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find JobsSenior Level Founding Designer Job Market
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Education
- Sports & Recreation
- Staffing & Recruiting
- Distribution & Wholesale
Senior Level Founding Designer Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a senior level founding designer job?
Employers hiring at this level look for designers who have owned the full product design lifecycle, not just contributed to it. A portfolio that shows systems thinking, decisions made under ambiguity, and measurable outcomes gives you the clearest edge. Demonstrating that you have mentored other designers or shaped design culture inside a team signals the kind of organizational impact these roles require.
Which companies hire senior level founding designers?
Companies hiring senior level founding designers right now include Giga, MERCOR, and SERVAL, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. At this level, hiring tends to come from early-stage and growth-stage companies building out their first formal design function alongside established organizations that need senior practitioners to lead redesigns or new product lines.
Are there remote senior level founding designer jobs?
Yes, though availability varies by company stage and design complexity. About 38% of senior level founding designer openings are remote or hybrid as of November 2026, reflecting strong demand from distributed product teams. Some early-stage companies prefer on-site presence during the first months to establish design culture, so it is worth confirming the arrangement before applying.
What makes a founding designer role senior level?
Senior level founding designer roles are defined by scope and ownership. You are not executing tasks handed down from above but setting design direction, establishing systems and processes from the ground up, and making consequential product decisions with limited oversight. These roles also carry an expectation that you will mentor earlier-career designers and advocate for design as a strategic function within leadership conversations.
Which industries hire the most senior level founding designers?
Senior Level founding designer roles concentrate in Technology & Software, Education, and Sports & Recreation, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. These sectors tend to hire at this level because they are either building new digital products that require a designer who can operate as a strategic partner from day one, or scaling existing ones fast enough to need senior design ownership without the overhead of a large team.