Founding Design & Human Factors Lead

Location: Hybrid (Remote + Occasional On-site). Preferred locations include Cincinnati, OH or San Francisco, CA

Employment Type: Full-Time

The Opportunity:

Surgical care currently faces challenges due to variable and subjective decision-making, which can lead to suboptimal patient outcomes and significant avoidable costs for hospitals. We are working with an early-stage medical technology company developing AI-powered surgical copilots designed to provide real-time insights and bring greater consistency to the operating room (OR).

We are looking for a Founding Design Lead to own the user experience and visual identity for their next-generation surgical platform. This is a high-impact role equivalent to a founding engineer, where you will shape the product from the ground up and own the human interaction layer of a real-time, AI-enabled medical device.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design Leadership: Lead the UX/UI and interaction design for the core platform, including information architecture, wireframes, and high-fidelity visual design.
• Interface Development: Create surgeon-facing digital experiences across various displays, balancing clarity with cognitive load.
• Collaboration: Work closely with engineers and clinicians to translate complex requirements into intuitive, testable user experiences.
• Prototyping: Build and iterate on interactive prototypes to support development and gather clinical feedback.
• Usability & Compliance: Support usability engineering activities in regulated contexts, including formative evaluations and design inputs for regulatory documentation.
• Brand & Culture: Help shape the company’s visual identity and mentor future design hires to establish a strong design culture.

Qualifications

Required:

• Experience & Domain: 5+ years in UX/UI or digital product design, specifically for complex, data-rich medical or surgical environments.
• Technical Design Skills: Expert proficiency in workflow design, wireframing, and high-fidelity prototyping for professional-grade software.
• Engineering Partnership: Proven ability to collaborate closely with engineering teams to bring designs into production.
• Safety-Critical Design: Strong understanding of human-centered design principles within regulated or safety-critical environments.
• Startup Aptitude: Excellent communication skills and the ability to thrive in a fast-moving environment with significant ownership and ambiguity.
• Portfolio: A portfolio demonstrating thoughtful UX/UI design for complex, expert-user systems.

Preferred:

• Specialized Experience: Background with surgical video systems, clinical decision-support software, or hardware-software integration.
• Regulatory Knowledge: Working knowledge of FDA usability expectations and IEC 62366.
• Founding Mindset: Experience in a founding or early-stage design role, including shaping brand identities and design systems.
• Tools: Proficiency with Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, and prototyping frameworks.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary, equity, and benefits package.
• The chance to work on high-impact projects that directly improve patient outcomes
• A collaborative environment with significant opportunities for professional growth.