Mariana Minerals · San Francisco
DesignProduct DevelopmentFullTimeposted 3w ago
Mariana Minerals is a software-first, vertically integrated minerals company on a mission to supply the critical minerals powering modern energy, AI, and defense technologies. We’re reimagining the minerals supply chain by combining deep industry expertise with advanced software, automation, and data-driven decision-making.
We already have strong team of engineers, product managers and end users; what we don't have is someone whose full-time job is to sit with complexity and simplify it. We're hiring our first dedicated design hire to help bring MarianaOS to the next level. You'll work across teams to ensure that MarianaOS is intuitive, and human-centered on the surface while managing a tremendous amount of complexity underneath. This is not primarily a pixel-polish role; it's a role for someone who can take genuinely complicated, data-heavy workflows and make them feel obvious.
Take complex, data-dense workflows in MarianaOS and design clear, usable information architecture and flows ensuring MarianaOS is easy and fast to use for the 100s of employees here that rely on MarianaOS daily to do their complex jobs.
Grow and own our design system, including coded components and not just Figma files, which allows our engineers to quickly build great user interfaces with agentic tools.
Partner with PMs and engineers from early problem framing through shipped UI; you'll be in the room for the messy part, not just handed a spec.
Give and receive fast, direct design feedback across the team to help raise the visual bar and deliver valuable and usable products for end users.
Prototype directly in code when that's the fastest way to a real answer; pairing and working live with engineers rather than only handing off finished mocks so that great designs are delivered quickly.
Set short-horizon design direction (weeks to a couple months, not multi-year vision decks) so a fast-shipping engineering team stays pointed at something coherent.
Run and synthesize lightweight user research and feedback loops with customers and internal stakeholders, ensuring the products we are launching are grounded in user needs and feedback
Define best design practices/ways of working setting the tone of how design will function in the company as we grow.
We're optimizing for five things, roughly in this priority order:
Simplifying complexity. The single most important skill. Show us you can take a complicated product or dataset and turn it into something clear. That matters more than visual polish or raw technical depth.
Complex product experience. You've designed for a real, non-trivial product and can walk us through the hard tradeoffs you made. Experience designing for technical, operational, or data-heavy products (vs. consumer apps) is important. Showing the ability to distill complex problems into a clear story of what the user is doing and why and how they get to the end goal.
Opinionated visual design direction. Brings a real perspective on what great visual design looks like; we don’t want middle of the road SaaS visual design. We want future looking visual design which reflects our vision to modernize mining. We need to do this in a way which doesn’t compromise usability in a way which impacts outcomes.
Collaborative, cross-functional instinct. You're energized by sitting with PMs and engineers to work through a problem together, not just receiving a brief. We need someone whose design judgment the team learns to trust quickly.
AI fluency and adaptability. The classic mock-first design process (discovery, mocks, iterate) doesn't fit how software gets built anymore, especially at a company where engineers, and increasingly customers and internal users via tools like Replit and other AI builders, can go from idea to working software in hours. We want someone who already uses AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, v0, or similar) as part of how they work, prototypes in code rather than only in Figma, and adapts their process readily rather than defending a fixed one. This person should be comfortable designing in the open: shaping something as it's being built and used, rather than fully specifying it up front.
Good pixel craft matters and we want someone who produces clean, professional visual work, but it's not the top bar for this role. Similarly, deep technical ability (e.g., owning a design system solo, writing production code) is a plus, not a requirement, since we have engineers who can share that load.
Given how much AI has scrambled the shape of design/product/engineering roles in the last couple of years, we're open to unconventional backgrounds: a UX designer, a design-minded product builder, or an engineer who loves design and wants to focus on prototyping and systems. What matters is demonstrated judgment on complex problems, not the job title on a past resume.
The focus is a seasoned specialist with a deep complex-product portfolio. We need someone with lots of experience working with teams to simplify data. As the first designer with a very high engineer-to-designer ratio on a fast-growing team, an enthusiastic junior may get buried here and not perform that well. Ideally we find someone who has been a first designer at a startup before.
Everyone Gets Home Safe. We never put speed or cost ahead of people.
Extreme Ownership. We take full responsibility for outcomes, relentlessly driving toward solutions.
Engineer Out Requirements, then Automate. We simplify, optimize, and then automate for scale.
Share Your Legos. We collaborate openly, share knowledge, and empower each other to build bigger, better solutions.
Join us as we build the future of responsible mineral sourcing and supply!