Design Engineer - SF

OpenWork is building the open-source Claude Cowork alternative.

But the real goal is bigger than that.

I don’t think AI should be another chatbot tab. The best version is a workspace where people, agents, files, browsers, MCPs, skills, and company context all work together.

We’re looking for a design engineer in SF.

This role is for someone who can make complex agent workflows feel obvious.

You’ll work across:

- desktop app UX

- web app UX

- realtime agent state

- multi-agent / multi-session views

- browser + file previews

- artifacts

- onboarding

- team/workspace sharing

- small details that make the product feel trustworthy

Stack is mostly TypeScript, React, Node, Electron, Tailwind, and a bunch of weird agent/product surface area.

The kind of person who will do well here:

- ships daily

- has built beautiful product experiences before

- can design with intention

- can code the thing, not just mock it

- has taste and can explain why something feels good or bad

- cares about motion, spacing, state, latency, and empty states

- uses the latest models but does not outsource taste to them

In your first days, you’ll ship UI/UX improvements across the desktop app and web app.

In your first month, we expect you to be able to think clearly about how to design meaningfully better experiences for users — not just polish surfaces, but improve how people understand, trust, and use the product.

In your first 60–90 days, you should be shipping bigger product changes that make OpenWork feel less like “AI chat with tools” and more like a real workspace for human + agent collaboration.

I started OpenWork while running my previous startup on AI workflows. The product came from wanting to share my own agent setup with coworkers — not as prompts in a doc, but as reusable skills, tools, MCPs, and workflows the whole team could actually use.

That’s still the core idea.

Your org’s workflows should compound. Your agents should be shareable. Your tools should be connected. And the interface should make all of this feel obvious.

Only SF for this role.

Not “I’d be ready to move there.”

SF.

Comp: $130k–$200k salary + 1–5% equity.

If you want to apply, you need to send all three:

1. cool shit you did

2. your GitHub

3. an explanation of your current design process in this new era

Not one of them. All three.

A polished resume is less interesting.

Interview Process

1. First call with founder.

Second call with CTO / product-engineering conversation.

Then a 1-day paid trial or working session in SF.

The goal is simple: can you ship beautiful, useful product quickly, and do we build well together?