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Salary: USD 120,000 - 160,000 / annual
Tetsuwan Scientific is building infrastructure to accelerate biological research by automating laboratory experimentation. The company has developed a user-friendly editor and compiler that converts scientist-written protocols into executable code for robotic lab instruments, dramatically reducing manual pipetting work and improving reproducibility.
You will be the first dedicated product designer on a small, fast-growing team currently raising seed funding. You'll work alongside an existing designer (transitioning from split design/engineering duties), software engineers, automation engineers, and founders. The role offers the opportunity to own design end-to-end and shape the product, team, and company at an early stage where your decisions have outsized impact.
The core design challenge: the product philosophy requires surfacing every editable detail to give scientists full control over automation decisions, from PDF protocol to compiled code. This creates a novel UI/UX problem—how to communicate complex lab automation to expert users while maintaining a pleasant, intuitive experience. You'll conduct user research with real scientists, develop information architecture, design interfaces for unfamiliar workflows, create prototypes, and iterate based on direct observation of how scientists interact with your work.
You'll tackle problems with few industry precedents, requiring close collaboration with engineers to understand technical constraints and with domain experts (scientists) to understand their mental models and workflows.
Location: San Francisco, in-person at the SoMa office.
QUALIFICATIONS
Required:
- 3+ years professional experience designing software products
- Ability to run projects end-to-end: research, sketches, prototypes, polished UI, clean handoff to engineers
- Fluency in Figma and adjacent design tools
- Comfort with multi-discipline technical complexity; willingness to engage deeply with engineers and domain experts
Nice to Have:
- Experience designing for life sciences, lab workflows, or technical domains where users are domain experts
- Familiarity with developer tools, visual programming tools, projectional editors, node graph interfaces, program state visualization, or error/diagnostic UX
- Startup or early-stage company experience
- Understanding of frontend development and design-engineering trade-offs
- Personal creative practice (illustration, motion, printmaking, ceramics, etc.)
