Founding Design Engineer

As Founding Design Engineer, you will sit at the intersection of design, product, and engineering. You will take part in building Arcline’s agentic legal platform, which automates 80% of legal work and manages communication between lawyers and clients.

This is a high-impact role for someone energized by shaping product experience from zero to one, sweating visual details, and turning complex workflows into elegant, intuitive interfaces. You will work in a team of highly talented designers, software engineers and AI engineers, reporting directly to the CTO.

About Arcline

Arcline is building the next generation of legal services.

We are an AI-native legal platform serving startups across the US and Europe. Our mission is simple: make legal work fast, transparent, and accessible without compromising on quality. Today, legal is often slow, expensive, and unpredictable. We’re fixing that.

At Arcline, AI handles up to 80% of the work: intake, research and drafting. Our network of elite lawyers can focus on the final 20% that requires real judgment. This allows us to deliver high-quality legal work with same-day turnaround and upfront, fixed pricing - something traditional firms can’t offer.

Arcline was founded by Stefan and Pamir. Pamir is an Oxford-trained lawyer specialised in technology law. He has experience from multiple leading technology companies including OpenAI. Stefan is an expert in AI/ML for regulated industries. Stefan has built and scaled ML-powered products to millions of users.

What You’ll Do

UI/UX Design and Product Experience

• Design and build polished, intuitive interfaces for Arcline’s AI-powered product
• Translate complex workflows into clear, user-friendly interaction patterns
• Create high-fidelity UI designs and rapidly bring them to life in code
• Define information architecture, navigation, and end-to-end user journeys

Frontend Development and Design Systems

• Build out new features from zero to one
• Improve and iterate on existing functionality based on user feedback
• Develop and maintain Arcline’s design system and component library
• Optimize performance, accessibility, and UI reliability
• Adopt and master the latest AI tools to improve development efficiency

Product Strategy and Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with founders to shape product direction and UX strategy
• Participate in customer discovery to understand user pain points
• Prototype new ideas quickly and iterate based on feedback
• Collaborate with AI engineers to deliver cohesive experiences

What We’re Looking For

• 3–7 years of experience in product design, frontend engineering, or design engineering
• Strong UI/UX design skills with a portfolio of product work
• Proficiency in modern frontend technologies (we use Next.js and Typescript)
• Ability to move seamlessly between design tools and production code
• Deep attention to visual detail — spacing, typography, hierarchy, and motion
• Strong product intuition — you understand what makes interfaces feel simple and fast
• Experience designing complex workflows, dashboards, or productivity tools
• Excellent communication skills — you can explain design decisions clearly
• Experience with Figma or similar design tools

Bonus Points

• Experience as a designer or engineer at an early-stage startup
• Familiarity with AI-native UI patterns (streaming, inline editing, copilots, etc.)
• Accessibility and performance optimization experience
• Background from legaltech, productivity tools, or B2B SaaS

Why Arcline

• Direct access to both founders from day one — shape the product experience from scratch
• Define the design culture of an AI-native company
• High degree of trust and autonomy
• Hot market: we’re building the defining AI-native firm in a $1T+ industry
• Accelerated growth path: evolve into Head of Design or Product leadership
• Backed by Y Combinator — access to the best network in startups for hiring and partnerships

Apply using YC’s job portal. We review every application and respond only to relevant applicants within 1–2 week(s).