Founding Product Designer

Tempoabout 20 hours ago

Toronto, Ontario, CA

CA$89,089 - CA$142,543/yearly

Mid Level

full_time

Competitive salary aligned with impact

Equity ownership in fast-growing AI startup

Lunch provided 3 days a week in in-house environment

Tempo is one of Canada's fastest-growing AI startups, backed by Y Combinator. We're building a visual IDE for product teams—a platform that merges the craft of design with the rigor of engineering. Designers, PMs, and developers use Tempo to collaboratively ship production-grade web and mobile apps faster than ever before. With a strong focus on design systems, AI-assisted workflows, and real-time collaboration, we're helping teams move beyond "vibe coding" into a new era of design engineering.

We're looking for a founding UI/UX Design Engineer to join our in-office team in Toronto. This is a leadership position for someone with the experience, creativity, and drive to own our design engineering process end-to-end. You won't just design screens—you'll set the standard for how users experience Tempo, shaping our component library, interaction patterns, and AI-driven workflows that thousands of builders will use every day.

As the owner of user experience at Tempo, you'll collaborate directly with product, engineering, and AI/ML teams to translate complex problems into clear, intuitive, and beautiful interfaces. You'll bring a strong systems mindset to ensure our design system scales, and the creativity to elevate details like motion, accessibility, and real-time collaboration. This is a role for someone who wants to lead by building—rolling up your sleeves to deliver production-ready components while also driving the vision of design at one of Canada's most ambitious startups.

• Own end-to-end UI : Go from concept flows wireframes prototypes production-ready, high-fidelity UI.
• Build real product : Implement responsive, accessible components in React + TypeScript + Tailwind, using Radix UI / shadcn patterns.
• Shape complex UX : Partner with Product, Eng, and AI/ML to design clear interactions for real-time, multi-user features.
• Evolve our design system : Drive tokens, theming, documentation, and component APIs for scalability and consistency.
• Design with AI in the loop : Integrate AI-assisted design-to-code workflows and author patterns that our agents can reliably compose.
• Polish the feel : Add motion, micro-interactions, and states that improve comprehension—not just aesthetics.
• Collaborate in real time : Help build collaborative UX using Liveblocks/WebSockets, optimizing presence, conflict-resolution, and latency.
• Ship accessible, fast UI : Ensure that all designs adhere to accessibility standards, keep Core Web Vitals green, and measure UX with meaningful product metrics.

• Portfolio of shipped, product-quality UI that demonstrates strong visual taste and systems thinking. We care less about where you've worked or how long you've been there, and more about what you can create, the rigor behind your process, and the clarity of your outcomes. Case studies should highlight not only polished visuals, but also your approach to design systems, interaction patterns, accessibility, and measurable product impact.
• Fluency with Figma (flows, prototypes, component props/variants).
• Experience building within a design system (tokens, theming, component APIs).
• Strong grasp of UX principles, interaction design, and accessibility fundamentals.
• Interest in AI-augmented workflows (promptable components, agent-safe patterns).

• Hands-on with React, TypeScript, Tailwind, Radix/shadcn in production.
• Animation & interaction craft (Framer Motion, CSS keyframes, spring physics).
• Real-time collaboration UX (CRDTs, optimistic UI, presence patterns).
• Testing and quality: Storybook, Playwright/Jest, a11y tooling (axe, aria-lint).
• Mobile mindset: Expo/React Native or responsive patterns beyond breakpoints.

• Competitive salary — aligned with the impact you bring.
• Equity ownership in one of Canada's fastest-growing AI startups.
• In-house team environment with lunch provided 3 days a week.
• Flexible vacation & sick policy — we care about you being at your best, not just at your desk.
• Quarterly team events & outings to celebrate wins and build stronger connections.

Events Services

51-200

Tempo is a live events company, revolutionizing social connections and event organization by providing a platform that brings people together in meaningful ways. Our goal is simple: find the best events for our users and present it to them in a beautiful and simple interface. Tempo revolves around two apps, Tempo (B2C) and TempoPro (B2B). On Tempo, users will be able to see events planned in their city, explore venues, save their favorite events for later, and let their friends know what they're interested in and are going to. Pulse boasts a social networking core, with friends and chats. Feel free to add your friends, create a group with them and share your group's go-to events. Tempo Pro is our B2B app that has two main functions. The first is to upload events to our main app for the world to see. The second is a booking platform which gives professionals in the industry a hub to do business faster and more easily. You can join Tempo Pro, as a venue, a collective, a promoter, an artist management agency or an artist yourself. Venues and collectives will be able to see what artists are available for prospective dates they are looking to plan events on, and agencies and artists can easily post what days and where they are available for bookings. Every Tempo Pro user will also have access to their performance metrics to see what events are getting traction. Our mission is to make life simple for all levels of this industry, and to help our users live their life to the fullest.