Senior Director, Design - Model Experience

Own the creative vision for model experience: Define and evolve how our AI models look, feel, speak, and interact across all surfaces — establishing a coherent design language that spans personality, tone, visual design, and interaction patterns.

Do the work yourself:

Personally produce high-quality IC output — whether that's crafting model personality specifications, designing interaction prototypes, defining prompt taxonomies, or building evaluation frameworks for response quality. You lead by example.

Shape model personality and tone:

Work directly with model researchers to define and refine the model's character, voice, and communication style. Translate abstract personality goals into concrete SFT data strategy, quality rubrics, and evaluation criteria. Drive UX for key product surfaces: Own the experience design for MM Labs, Playground, marketing pages, and model specification tools. Ensure every surface reflects world-class design craft and a deep understanding of how users interact with AI. Coach and grow a small team: Manage 4-5 direct reports across model design and UX design. Set direction, run rigorous critiques, unblock your team, and raise the quality bar — while keeping your own hands in the work.

Bridge linguistics and design:

Serve as the connective tissue between model behavior (how the model responds) and product experience (how users perceive and interact with those responses). Ensure linguistic quality and design craft reinforce each other.

Partner across research and engineering:

Collaborate closely with model researchers, product managers, and engineers to influence model training priorities, evaluation rubrics, and user-facing capabilities from the earliest stages of development. Build evaluation systems for design quality: Define what "good" looks like for model personality and UX. Build rubrics, run evaluations, and create feedback loops that connect user experience insights back to model training. Bachelor's Degree in Product Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, Communication Design, Linguistics, or related field AND 8+ years experience in product design, experience design, or a related creative discipline OR Master's Degree in a related field AND 6+ years experience OR equivalent experience (e.g., demonstrated track record of shipping design work that shaped product identity and user experience) 2+ years of experience managing or mentoring designers, with a strong preference for player-coach roles where you remained deeply hands-on A portfolio that demonstrates exceptional craft in interaction design, visual design, or content/personality design — with evidence of personal IC contribution, not just direction-setting Experience designing for AI, LLM, or conversational systems — or a demonstrated deep understanding of how language, tone, and personality affect user trust and experience Comfort working across disciplines: you can review SFT data quality with a linguist in the morning and critique a Figma prototype in the afternoon Track record of shipping products end-to-end in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where you owned both the vision and the details