Staff Product Designer

Vitalize
San Francisco HQ, US
Hybrid

Who this role is best for

Strong fit for product designers with B2B SaaS experience who lead AI-first design processes and shape strategic product areas.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with 8+ years of B2B SaaS design experience and a proven track record of end-to-end ownership of complex problems
    — “8+ years of product design experience, including significant time designing complex, workflow-heavy B2B SaaS products”
  • Candidates who have led AI-powered product design and can articulate how AI enhances user trust and transparency
    — “Experience designing AI-powered products: you’ve shipped experiences where AI makes recommendations or takes action”
  • Candidates who are comfortable with on-site hospital visits and translating operational insights into product decisions
    — “you’re comfortable in hospitals observing operational workflows firsthand”

Things to consider

  • The role requires close collaboration with Product and Engineering leadership, not just execution of tasks
    — “partnering closely with product and engineering leadership”
  • The role involves shaping how AI appears in the product, which may require adapting to evolving AI integration practices
    — “we’re not there yet. We’ve started using AI for early exploration and prototyping”

How to stand out

  • Highlight AI-first design methodologies and how they improved product outcomes in your portfolio
    — “AI is already central to how you design”
  • Emphasize your ability to translate hospital operational research into product decisions
    — “translate what you learn into product decisions and strategy”
  • Demonstrate your experience in building or evolving a design system with consistency and flexibility
    — “you’ve built or led the evolution of a design system”
  • Showcase your ability to define high-impact, ambiguous problems and deliver measurable outcomes
    — “portfolio that shows end-to-end ownership of high-impact, ambiguous problems”
  • Position yourself as a strategic influencer who challenges workflows and aligns teams around design vision
    — “set direction, not just respond to requests”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • define AI-first design workflow
  • set design direction for complex product areas
  • lead design for high-stakes problems
Typical background
product designUX/UI designAI in design

Skills & requirements

Required

Ai-first DesignUx/ui DesignProduct DesignDesign SystemsCross-functional Collaboration

Preferred

AI In DesignData Visualization

About the role

Original posting from Vitalize via Ashby

OUR VISION

Health systems still run critical operations like staffing, labor planning, and capacity on spreadsheets, phone calls, and guesswork.

Vitalize is building the AI operating system for how health systems manage labor and capacity. The impact is real: we save hospitals millions in unnecessary labor spend, give clinical leaders back 10–20 hours every week, and are often the reason staff and leaders stay.

We’re trusted by leading health systems across the country and have raised more than $31M from top healthcare and technology investors, including our own customers.

OUR VALUES

We hire and grow everyone against the same four values. Each one comes from a real Vitalize story—interview with us to hear them!

  • 🚗 Push the Car. Step in regardless of role. We help wherever we're needed, own problems end to end, and don't stay in our lane. People can count on us.
  • 🏥 Premier 1K. We show up for our customers, always. Nearly everyone visits a customer site in their first month, and customer feedback informs everything we do.
  • 🗣️ Run Towards the Ugly. Name the ugliest truth first, then propose the fix. Candor over comfort—we call out what's broken, and never get complacent. This shapes our craft.
  • 💡 Think Bigger Fridays. See the gap, fill it—no permission required. Every decision is an experiment: we run it, let the results decide, and drive real impact from day one.

ABOUT VITALIZE'S DESIGN TEAM

Design at Vitalize is grounded in a deep understanding of the people and systems that power healthcare. We spend time in hospitals, learn how work happens from the frontline to the C-suite, and use those insights to design products that make complex operational decisions easier. We care deeply about craft, but we believe great design starts with getting the workflow right—not just the interface. As a small team, we work closely with Product and Engineering, share work early, challenge each other’s thinking, and stay close to the customers using what we build.

THE ROLE

You’ll be the third product designer at Vitalize, joining at a stage where you’ll help define not just what we build, but how we design. You’ll set the design direction for our most complex and strategic product areas, partnering closely with product and engineering leadership to turn ambiguous, high-stakes problems into clear, intuitive experiences.

We want design at Vitalize to be AI-first, and we’ll be honest: we’re not there yet. We’ve started using AI for early exploration and prototyping, but we don’t have a consistent workflow or clear best practices. A big part of this role is changing that. You’ll help define what an AI-first design process looks like here: how we use AI to explore more ideas, prototype faster, and get to real customer feedback sooner, without lowering the craft bar.

You’ll also shape how AI shows up in the product itself, design across data-dense, AI-powered workflows, lead the evolution of our design system, and set a consistently high bar for everything we ship as Vitalize scales.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

  • Build our AI-first design workflow: figure out how AI fits into every stage of our design process, from exploration and prototyping to production. Set the best practices, workflows, and quality standards the team adopts
  • Lead by example: use AI daily to explore, prototype, and test ideas quickly, then bring the strongest directions to production quality
  • Set design direction across the product: lead design for our most complex, cross-cutting product areas from discovery through launch, and shape the long-term product vision alongside Product and Engineering leadership
  • Design complex, workflow-heavy experiences: make data-dense operational tools intuitive for users ranging from central staffing teams and unit managers to frontline clinicians
  • Shape how AI shows up in the product: decide where AI meaningfully improves workflows and how its recommendations, reasoning, and actions appear, so clinical and operational users can trust and act on them
  • Work directly with customers: visit hospitals, observe real workflows, lead research, and translate what you learn into product decisions and strategy
  • Influence the roadmap: question the underlying workflow, find opportunities beyond the immediate request, and connect design decisions to customer and business outcomes
  • Raise the bar for the whole team: mentor other designers, lead critique, and build the practices, rituals, and quality standards that help a small design team do exceptional work

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

  • 8+ years of product design experience, including significant time designing complex, workflow-heavy B2B SaaS products, with a portfolio that shows end-to-end ownership of high-impact, ambiguous problems, from problem definition through shipped product and measurable outcomes
  • An AI-first design workflow you can teach: AI is already central to how you design, you have a clear point of view on where it speeds up the process, where it falls short, and how to keep quality high, and you’re excited to help a team build that muscle
  • Experience designing AI-powered products: you’ve shipped experiences where AI makes recommendations or takes action, and you think carefully about trust, transparency, and when a human should stay in the loop
  • Exceptional product instincts and craft: you look beyond the immediate UI, challenge whether the workflow itself is right, and turn complicated systems into experiences that feel simple
  • Strategic influence: you set direction, not just respond to requests, and can align product, engineering, and leadership around a design vision backed by evidence
  • A customer- and outcomes-oriented mindset: you’re comfortable in hospitals observing operational workflows firsthand, and you connect your work to measurable impact for customers and the business
  • Design systems leadership: you’ve built or led the evolution of a design system and know how to balance consistency with the speed of an early-stage company
  • A multiplier on the team: you’ve mentored designers, raised the craft bar through critique, and shaped how a design team works, and you’re excited to stay hands-on while helping build the function

BENEFITS

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • 401(k) with company match
  • Flexible PTO
  • Unlimited travel budget to visit customer sites
  • Twice-yearly company off-sites
  • Free meals in-office
  • $5,000 relocation bonus for eligible employees
  • Desk setup reimbursement
  • Commuter benefits
  • Monthly gym/wellness stipend
  • An awesome office in Jackson Square, steps from the water

Source: Vitalize careers (Ashby)

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