Design Engineer
Applied Compute· startup· Internet· Jul 22, 2026 · 3mo agoPosted 97 days ago
San Francisco
In office
Full-time
Mid
$190K–$310K
Before you apply
Ghost Signal:
Open since July 22, 2026 — 97 days, and still accepting applications.
Job description
THE ROLE
We're looking for a brand designer who lives at the intersection of design and code. You'll craft the brand and experience that makes Specific Intelligence legible and intuitive to our audience of engineers, researchers, and heads of AI/ML at some of the largest companies in the world.
This includes the interfaces where customers first learn about Applied Compute (our website, blog posts, case studies) as well as materials and platforms that shows up publicly across our GTM efforts. You'll work directly with the founding team to prototype, build, and polish the surfaces that sit on top of our research and infrastructure. This is a role for someone who thinks like a designer but builds like an engineer to help define and operationalize the visual language and messaging for the company.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Define the visual language, voice, and design philosophy for Applied Compute: from the website to the decks.
- Turn our research into interactive experiences.
- Find the visual vocabulary for abstract infrastucture across models, weights, traces, inference, and continual learning.
- Establish the systems (components, templates, primitives) that let a small team ship consistently across sales collateral, GTM assets, and launches.
- Push our engineering and research teams on craft, and partner with them closely on storytelling.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- Strong brand and visual design chops, with a portfolio of public-facing work.
- Technical fluency. We publish frontier work on post-training, RL, and async training, and would be excited to work with someone who finds this research exciting.
- An engineer's instincts about our audience.
- Hands on keyboard. We'd be eager to work with someone who has strong opinions and wants to execute them personally.
- High agency and comfort with ambiguity in a fast-moving market.
STRONG CANDIDATES ALSO HAVE
- Experience building brand for developer tools, infrastructure, or other abstract technical products.
- Data visualization or technical illustration experience.
- Brand experience at a larger company or agency, paired with the appetite to work at startup speed.
- A history of owning something zero to one.
The U.S. base salary range for this full-time position is $190,000–$310,000. Total compensation for this role also includes meaningful equity in a fast-growing startup, along with a comprehensive benefits package designed to support you both personally and professionally. Base salary is determined by a range of factors including individual qualifications, experience, skills, interview performance, market data, and work location. The listed salary range is intended as a guideline and may be adjusted.
ABOUT US
Applied Compute builds Specific Intelligence for the enterprise. We provide the continual learning infrastructure for companies to build agent workforces trained on proprietary data and institutional expertise. Our researchers and platform embed directly within customer environments to build custom evals, train models, and deploy agents that get better with use.
- Why we’re excited: We get to work at a rare intersection. Our product team builds the platform powering a new generation of digital coworkers. Our research team pushes the frontier of post-training and reinforcement learning. Our applied AI team sits side-by-side with customers as they ship agents into production. This combination of strong product, deep research, and boots on the ground is what we believe it takes to bring AI to the enterprise. We are product-led, research-enabled, and forward-deployed.
- Who we are: We’re a team of engineers, researchers, and operators. Many of us are former founders. We've built RL infrastructure at OpenAI, data foundations at Scale AI, and systems at Together, Two Sigma, Watershed, and others. We work with F50 customers and are fortunate to be backed by partners like Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark, Sequoia, Lux, and Greenoaks.
- Who Thrives Here: We're looking for people who are excited about applying novel research and complex systems to real-world problems. Our team genuinely enjoys working with customers: listening, empathizing, and understanding how work actually gets done in their organizations. Former founders, people who've built a lot of side projects, or anyone who's shown they can own something end-to-end, tend to do well here.
BENEFITS & LOGISTICS
This role is based in San Francisco. We work from our office in the Mission. We offer:
- Competitive compensation and equity
- 100% employer-paid health insurance coverage for you and your family
- Unlimited PTO
- Paid parental leave
- Daily lunches and dinners
- Transportation and relocation support
- 5% 401k match
We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the process with you. We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. As set forth in Applied Compute’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.
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Benefits
Benefits detected in the listing.
Health Insurance
401k
Pto
Parental Leave