Senior Product Designer at Plane

Job description

ABOUT PLANE Plane's mission is to build the infrastructure the world's work runs on. Every organization runs on three things: the projects it's driving, the knowledge it keeps, and the requests it fields. Plane brings all three into one open, adaptable platform: simple enough for any team to adopt, dependable enough for organizations to build on. And we are building it for a future where humans and AI agents do that work together. Plane began in public on GitHub at the end of 2022. Since then it has grown into a work management platform used by teams around the world: 55,000+ stars, 5,000+ forks, and a contributor community that reads our code and files our issues. Organizations run Plane as a managed Cloud service, on their own infrastructure, or inside fully isolated environments. Building in the open keeps us close to users and raises the standard for everything we ship. Plane is the #1 work infrastructure in aerospace, defense, financial services, and other regulated industries: organizations whose requirements for control, auditability, and data residency rule most software out. When the strictest buyers pick a system of record, that choice means something. Adoption is growing fastest on Plane Cloud and in sovereign clouds, deployments that keep everything inside a country's own borders and rules. Plane is backed by top investors and built across San Francisco, London, and Hyderabad. We work in tightly knit teams, stay close to users, and care about the visible product as much as the unglamorous details that make software dependable. People own problems end to end, and we add process only when it helps the work. HUMANS AND AGENTS We believe the next decade of work will be done by humans and AI agents together. Not agents replacing people, and not a chat window bolted onto software built for humans clicking around, but both working in one system of action, where an agent's work is as visible and as accountable as a person's. Most software treats AI as a feature. We treat agents as a kind of worker, and that changes what the system underneath has to be. Agents are only as good as the context they can see and the state they are allowed to change, so shared context, explicit state, durable history, and accountable action are not items on our roadmap. They are the product. Plane is built so that when an agent acts, the humans responsible can see what happened, why, and on whose authority, and the record survives. This is what the infrastructure is for: making the future where humans and agents work together useful, legible, and fully within the organization's control. Every role at Plane is some part of building that. ABOUT THE ROLE Plane is used to plan and track work for thousands of teams, from three-person startups to engineering orgs running self-hosted instances we'll never log into. You'll own product design for the surfaces people use every day — issues, cycles, project views — where small friction compounds across thousands of workspaces. You'll work alongside product managers, engineers, and researchers in a small team spanning San Francisco and Hyderabad, and your interface decisions will show up in public GitHub issues within days of shipping. This role exists because we're past the point where a small team of designers can hold the product and the roadmap in their head, and we need someone to take real ownership of a slice of it. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own the design of core workflow surfaces (issues, cycles, views) end to end — from problem framing through high-fidelity spec, with the judgment calls in between being yours to make. - Decide where Plane's design system bends and where it holds. You'll build new patterns when the system doesn't have an answer, and push back when a one-off request would fragment it. - Run usability tests and read the resulting friction points as design problems, not just bug lists — then reprioritize your own roadmap based on what you find. - Design for two audiences at once: people using Plane's cloud product and people running it self-hosted on infrastructure and screen sizes you can't control or predict. - Work daily with engineers and PMs across San Francisco and Hyderabad, and expect your Figma files to get scrutinized in public issue threads by users you'll never meet. - Defend a design decision to an engineer who's already scoped the easier version, in writing, without a research study to hide behind — this happens more than the polished parts of the job. WHAT YOU'LL BRING - You've shipped end-to-end product design work — you can walk us through one project from ambiguous problem to shipped interface, including a decision you'd make differently now. - You design dense, data-heavy interfaces well — task lists, tables, kanban boards, or similar — not just marketing pages or onboarding flows. - You're fluent in Figma and can produce developer-ready specs — a component built from your file shouldn't need a clarifying Slack message. - You've worked inside or built a design system, and you understand the tradeoff between consistency and a designer's desire to solve each screen fresh. - You write and present clearly enough that your rationale survives contact with an engineer who disagrees with you — in a doc, a Slack thread, or a room. NICE TO HAVES - You've contributed to Plane, used it self-hosted, or have opinions about it as a user. - You've run usability testing or user research yourself, not just consumed someone else's findings. - You've designed for developer or technical audiences before. - You've worked at a B2B SaaS startup and know what "fast-paced" actually looks like on a design team. WHY PLANE? Every company says it is different. We will try evidence instead. The scope is real. We are a passion team serving companies of every size, including some of the largest in the world. Something you ship this month will run inside a Fortune 500 company and a 50-person startup in the same week, and you will hear from both. The constraints make you better. Plane runs in our cloud, in customers' clouds, and on machines that will never touch the internet. Much of the work happens in the open, where the issues, the fixes, and the roadmap conversations are public. Building software that survives all of that is harder than building an ordinary SaaS product, and it is a better education than most companies can offer. The people-and-agents future is being built here, in production. We think humans and AI agents will share one system of action for work. We are building that system now, for customers who already depend on it, and you will work on that problem directly whatever your role. Your name is on the work. The teams are deeply connected enough that credit and responsibility both find you fast. That is some pressure. Mostly it is the fun part. If that sounds like your kind of place, we would like to meet you. Plane is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

Requirements

Must-haves

This is what the infrastructure is for: making the future where humans and agents work together useful, legible, and fully within the organization's control. Every role at Plane is some part of building that.
Own the design of core workflow surfaces (issues, cycles, views) end to end — from problem framing through high-fidelity spec, with the judgment calls in between being yours to make.
Decide where Plane's design system bends and where it holds. You'll build new patterns when the system doesn't have an answer, and push back when a one-off request would fragment it.
Run usability tests and read the resulting friction points as design problems, not just bug lists — then reprioritize your own roadmap based on what you find.
Design for two audiences at once: people using Plane's cloud product and people running it self-hosted on infrastructure and screen sizes you can't control or predict.
Work daily with engineers and PMs across San Francisco and Hyderabad, and expect your Figma files to get scrutinized in public issue threads by users you'll never meet.
Defend a design decision to an engineer who's already scoped the easier version, in writing, without a research study to hide behind — this happens more than the polished parts of the job.
You've shipped end-to-end product design work — you can walk us through one project from ambiguous problem to shipped interface, including a decision you'd make differently now.
You design dense, data-heavy interfaces well — task lists, tables, kanban boards, or similar — not just marketing pages or onboarding flows.
You're fluent in Figma and can produce developer-ready specs — a component built from your file shouldn't need a clarifying Slack message.
You've worked inside or built a design system, and you understand the tradeoff between consistency and a designer's desire to solve each screen fresh.
You write and present clearly enough that your rationale survives contact with an engineer who disagrees with you — in a doc, a Slack thread, or a room.

Nice-to-haves

You've contributed to Plane, used it self-hosted, or have opinions about it as a user.
You've run usability testing or user research yourself, not just consumed someone else's findings.
You've designed for developer or technical audiences before.
You've worked at a B2B SaaS startup and know what "fast-paced" actually looks like on a design team.
Every company says it is different. We will try evidence instead.
Your name is on the work. The teams are deeply connected enough that credit and responsibility both find you fast. That is some pressure. Mostly it is the fun part.
If that sounds like your kind of place, we would like to meet you.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

aidesign systemfigma

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick