UI Product Designer

Cambridge, MA or EU Remote

UI Product Designer

About Us

Proton is building the AI operating system for wholesale distribution, embedded in the workflows that move nearly every physical product on the planet. Distribution is a $9 trillion industry running on software that has been stuck for decades. We unify CRM, PIM, eCommerce AI, and Order & Quote Entry AI into one platform with one data layer and one AI brain, so reps spend their time on customer relationships instead of data entry.

We hire people with high agency and high urgency. Everyone here is a builder who owns problems end to end and ships AI-native software faster than anyone else in the category.

The median Proton customer reports 3x profit return per dollar spent and an extra day of sales per rep per month. Hundreds of distributors run on Proton, from family-owned shops to publicly-traded enterprises. We're backed by Felicis Ventures and Battery Ventures.

The Role

We're hiring a UI Product Designer to own how Proton looks and works. Reporting to the VP of Product, you'll ship in a squad with PMs and engineers, and you'll be in front of customers constantly, watching reps use what you built and bringing back what you can only learn in person. Our product people know their users by name, not through a research summary.

Those users sit in one screen for eight hours a day and have spent their careers with software they merely tolerate. We want them to have something they'd choose: fast, modern, a pleasure to use. That's the hard version of the job, because most of the UI patterns you'd reach for by default were drawn for software that couldn't think. Ours can.

Two things make this role different from a standard product design opening:

  1. You're an AI-native designer, not just a Figma operator. Everyone here uses Claude Code and similar agentic tools as a first-class collaborator. We expect concepts prototyped in real code, put in front of people, and iterated with heavy AI leverage. Prototype before you polish, and make the calls AI can't.
  2. You set the craft bar. This hire decides how Proton looks and feels. Distribution software is famously grim and we intend to be the exception. You'll own the visual language and the design system across all four products.

Location: Cambridge, MA (hybrid, 3 days a week in Harvard Square) or remote in the EU.

Level: Product Designer through Senior Product Designer. Scope and autonomy change across that range.

Compensation: $80k – $100k base depending on experience, plus bonus, equity, and full benefits. EU offers are benchmarked to local market.

 

What You'll Do

  • Prototype in code with Claude Code or Cursor to feel an interaction before we commit
  • Own the design system: components, interactions, documentation, and the harder part, getting every squad to use them.
  • Define what AI looks like here. Nobody has settled patterns yet, so you'll decide what it looks like when a rep trusts an agent and when they overrule one.
  • Work inside our agentic scrum model. We don't run two-week sprints; cadence follows what a team and its agents can ship, and you'll help work out what design looks like in that.
  • Get in front of customers constantly, including onsite. Distributors work in warehouses and on sales floors, and the best design calls come from standing next to a rep.

Requirements

  • Craft that is demonstrably yours. Command of typography, layout, color, hierarchy, and iconography, with motion when it earns its place. You pull references from well outside software, and your work looks like someone made it rather than assembled it. We are explicitly not hiring people who let AI make their taste decisions. AI amplifies taste, it doesn't create it.
  • Real end-to-end delivery. Shipped products, real users, real ownership, alongside PM and engineering. Hands-on work, not an LLM-generated portfolio.
  • Daily, hands-on use of AI in your practice. Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent, used to ship real work rather than generate comps. You can say concretely how you structure context and check what comes back.
  • A portfolio. Products or features you took from concept to launch where you set the visual language yourself. We're most interested in a workflow you found trapped in a legacy system and reimagined: what you kept, what you threw out, and how you got people to move.
  • Systems thinking. You can author one beautiful screen and write the rules that let others make fifty consistent ones. You are curious enough to understand what's cheap to build and what isn't.
  • Real agile experience, and a pull toward customers. You've worked inside traditional scrum and know what those rituals were for. We've replaced it with an agentic scrum, and knowing the original is what lets you help rebuild it. You'd also rather be in the room with a user than briefed about them.

Big Plus

  • Complex B2B, enterprise, or ERP-adjacent software, with high-frequency users and workflows people can't opt out of.
  • Agentic products, and the patterns for trust, correction, and handoff between a person and an agent.
  • Early-stage SaaS startups.

Benefits

  • Competitive salary + company stock options — we want you to feel like an owner.
  • Flexible schedule with high autonomy.
  • Unlimited PTO + 10 company-paid holidays.
  • 12 weeks fully paid parental leave (primary and secondary, including adoption and fostering).
  • Annual company-paid offsites.

Proton.ai participates in the E-Verify program: Notice of E-Verify Participation, Right to Work.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Select...
Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Proton.ai’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 07/31/2029

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.