Founding Design Engineer

Design Engineer

Location: San Francisco (in-person, in-office, full-time ONLY)

Compensation: $150k-$250k base + top of market equity

About Virio

Virio is solving an unsolved problem: how do you produce perfect content? The best human strategist researches the space, finds the angle, and knows your goals and constraints — but they're capped by the hours in a day and one human career's worth of expertise. An agent isn't.

But reasoning this good is only as valuable as it is legible. Fortune 500 executives and founders running $100M+ companies won't put their name on content they can't see, steer, and trust — so the product has to be an interactive surface where they can watch the agents work, shape the strategy, and feel why each choice was made. The interface is what gives companies the trust to deploy non-deterministic content across hundreds of employees.

We're backed by operators from LinkedIn, YouTube, HubSpot, Rippling, and Google. The team is almost 100% ex-founders and VCs from Yale, UC Berkeley, Stripe, and more. And we've consecutively added $1M ARR/mo because everyone and their co-founder wants what we're selling.

This problem doesn't have a playbook. We're looking for a Design Engineer to own the interface end to end - to design and implement the canvas through which complex agent reasoning becomes something humans can see, steer, and trust.

What You'll Do

Design generative interfaces that rethink what's possible—not incremental tweaks, but genuinely imaginative approaches to how people interact with AI-driven products

Lead with product intuition : understand what users need before they ask, and imagine interfaces that make complex interactions feel natural and delightful

Own features end-to-end: from design concept through implementation to launch—you're the keeper of the vision through every stage

Build frontend components and systems that scale: write clean, maintainable code that doesn't constrain future ambition

Collaborate seamlessly with engineers and users: make design and implementation work together, not against each other

Read between the lines to imagine 10x better solutions : your taste and judgment are core to what we ship

Contribute to the core product roadmap and help define what gets built next

What Success Looks Like

You ship interfaces that users don't just use—they choose to use, and they're surprised by how natural they feel

You identify friction in the product experience and solve it with imaginative design and thoughtful implementation

You balance speed with quality—you ship fast without compromising on the details that matter

Your code is clean and intentional; your design pushes thinking forward while remaining accessible

You take full ownership—you don't wait for someone else to solve problems you see

Traits That Thrive at Virio

High agency & self-direction – Acts without waiting for requirements or detailed instructions

Small-team intensity comfort – Comfortable working intensely and closely with a small, high-output team

Unorthodox problem solving – Sees non-obvious paths forward and challenges conventional approaches

Quality-driven execution – Detail-oriented with high standards for correctness and quality

Low ego & accountability – Takes full ownership and accountability for outcomes

Benefits

Competitive total compensation aligned to impact and ownership

Meaningful equity upside as part of the founding team

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) plan

All working meals covered

Relocation support for San Francisco

Company-wide annual off-site

Direct access to founders and leadership

High ownership, high trust, and fast career progression alongside world-class client partners

In-person culture with deep commitment to excellence

This is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco with the team coming in 6 days/week. We do not offer hybrid or remote positions.