Lead Product Designer, AI & Experience
Hillspire / Office of Eric Schmidt · New York, NY
The Role
Key responsibilities for this role include the following:
Design Leadership & Product Ownership
- Own the design vision and execution for our civic engagement platform, creating user experiences that transform complex data into compelling, actionable intelligence.
- Design user-empowering AI interfaces that enable organizations to generate their own insights and content—balancing creative flexibility with guided workflows that drive meaningful outcomes.
- Make opinionated design decisions about information hierarchy and user journeys, strategically surfacing the most important data and actions to maximize civic impact and engagement.
- Pioneer change management through design by creating intuitive flows and progressive feature adoption that helps traditional organizations embrace AI-powered workflows.
Visual & Interaction Design
- Build and evolve our visual identity and brand expression across the platform—establishing design patterns that communicate trustworthiness, authority, and accessibility in the civic space.
- Design dynamic, responsive interfaces for AI-generated content that maintain quality and consistency even when users create custom reports, dashboards, and communication materials.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner closely with product and engineering to define interaction paradigms for LLM-driven features—from prompt design and result presentation to error handling and user guidance.
- Conduct targeted user research with civic leaders and organizers to understand decision-making processes, validate design directions, and identify opportunities for deeper platform integration.
- Establish and maintain design systems that support both structured data experiences and flexible content creation tools, ensuring brand coherence across user-generated outputs.
Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:
- Strategic Design Leadership: You think beyond screens to understand business objectives, user ecosystems, and product market fit. You can articulate design decisions in terms of strategic outcomes and user value.AI/LLM Product Fluency: You know how to design user experiences around AI—such as building prompt interfaces, revealing AI-generated insights progressively, and handling errors or unpredictable outputs gracefully.
- Full-Spectrum Design Skills: You're strong in UX research and strategy, highly capable in UI design and interaction patterns, and comfortable with visual design when needed. You know when to focus on each discipline.
- Technical Collaboration: You work seamlessly with engineers, understand frontend constraints and possibilities, and can iterate quickly on implementation without losing design quality.
- Research & Validation Expertise: You design and conduct user interviews, usability testing, and behavioral analysis. You synthesize insights into actionable product and design recommendations.
- Team Building & Resource Strategy: You've hired, managed, or closely collaborated with contractors, freelancers, and extended design teams. You thrive in lean, startup-like environments and know how to strategically scale design capacity through external partnerships while maintaining quality and cohesion.
- Data-Informed Design: You're comfortable with light data analysis—interpreting user analytics, A/B test results, and engagement metrics to inform design decisions.
Required Experience:
- 10+ years of product design experience, including senior or lead roles where you've owned end-to-end product experiences.
- Proven track record designing products that help users make sense of complex information and take meaningful action—whether through data visualization, workflow optimization, or insight-driven interfaces.
- Strong collaboration history working with engineering teams on frontend implementation, especially in fast-moving startup or product development environments.
- Experience in engagement-focused domains—political tech, social media platforms, advertising tools, or other spaces where design directly impacts how people connect, communicate, and take action.
- Familiarity with AI/ML product development, prompt engineering, or designing for conversational interfaces.
- Background in user research methodologies and translating insights into product strategy and design direction.
- Bonus: Experience with design systems, component libraries, or other scalable design infrastructure.
About Hillspire
Hillspire, LLC, is an integrated family office management company that serves the business and philanthropic activities of Eric and Wendy Schmidt and their family and supports more than 700 employees worldwide. Hillspire provides legal, finance, accounting, facilities and real estate, human resources, and information technology services to the organization.
Eric and Wendy Schmidt have created a number of philanthropic organizations and initiatives that work toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. These philanthropic organizations include:
The Schmidt Family Foundation works to restore a balanced relationship between people and planet. It has two grant-making and investment programs: The 11th Hour Project, which works to create a world with fresh air, clean water and healthy food for all people; and Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, which supports scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs in developing technologies that restore ocean health.
Schmidt Ocean Institute is a virtual institute that operates the research vessel Falkor (too). The ship and its assets are available at no cost to scientists worldwide working to explore, discover and understand the ocean. Schmidt Ocean catalyzes ocean exploration and research and educates and engages the public to inform the wise stewardship of the planet.
Schmidt Sciences works to deepen human understanding of the natural world and develop solutions to global issues with science and technology. The core focus areas of the organization include: AI and advanced computing, astrophysics and space, biosciences, climate and cross-science programs.
11th Hour Racing works with the sailing community and maritime industry to advance solutions and practices that protect and restore the health of the ocean.
Agog is a groundbreaking initiative at the intersection of technology, communications and social impact. The organization helps creators and nonprofit leaders harness the power of extended reality (XR) technologies to spur positive social transformation, opening new avenues for empathy, understanding and activism.
The Schmidt Initiative for Long Covid advances clinical care for Long Covid patients globally. The organization works to raise the level of Long Covid care and understanding around the world by connecting specialists and primary care providers to support patients and share knowledge virtually, in real time.
Remain is a charitable organization that supports the economic, social and environmental vitality of Nantucket.
