Senior Product Designer (Design Technologist, AI-Native)

About Citizen

At Citizen, we believe stronger awareness creates safer communities. Citizen is a real-time safety network used by millions of people to understand what’s happening around them as it unfolds: live video, emergency incidents, active situations, neighborhood activity, and community response — all in real time.

We are building products that sit at the intersection of:

• real-world urgency

• live information systems

• human behavior

• trust

• AI

• and immersive mobile experiences

This is not traditional social media. The stakes are higher. The emotional context is real. The product decisions matter.

About The Role

We’re hiring a Senior Product Designer with strong design technology skills to help shape the future of real-time safety experiences at Citizen. This role is for a designer first: someone who obsesses over interaction, clarity, behavior, emotion, and craft — but who also uses AI and code as creative tools to rapidly prototype, explore, and ship ideas.

You’ll design experiences across:

• live video

• notifications

• maps

• feeds

• immersive incident experiences

• AI-powered workflows

• and the systems that help people understand critical moments happening around them in real time

You should be comfortable moving fluidly between:

• product thinking

• UX systems

• interaction design

• motion and behavior

• prototyping

• and AI-assisted creation

You do not need to be a traditional software engineer.

We are looking for someone who thinks like a modern AI-native product designer:

someone who prototypes interactions instead of over-documenting them, uses AI to explore broader solution spaces, and understands how to design experiences that feel alive, responsive, and emotionally clear under pressure.

This is a highly collaborative, in-person role based in New York City.

What You’ll Do

• Design immersive real-time product experiences across notifications, live video, maps, feeds, and critical safety surfaces

• Prototype interactions, flows, and behaviors using the medium that best communicates the idea—AI tools, code, or native working prototypes

• Use AI in your daily creative workflow for:

• concept exploration

• interaction ideation

• research synthesis

• UX iteration

• motion exploration

• content generation

• rapid prototyping

• front-end scaffolding

• Create emotionally clear experiences that help users quickly understand complex, high-stakes situations

• Explore how AI can make real-time information systems feel more personalized, adaptive, and intelligent

• Work closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, Data, and Trust & Safety to shape experiences from concept through launch

• Design systems and interaction patterns that scale across multiple types of incidents, alerts, and user behaviors

• Prototype ideas early and often to align teams around vision, behavior, and feel — not just static screens

• Help evolve Citizen’s product craft, interaction quality, and AI-native design culture

Who You Are

• You are a product designer with strong technical instincts and prototyping ability

• You care deeply about interaction quality, pacing, clarity, emotional UX, and behavioral design

• You think beyond static screens and naturally design in flows, systems, states, and motion

• You are AI-native: AI is embedded into your workflow, thinking process, and creative exploration

• You use modern AI tools to rapidly explore ideas, compress iteration cycles, and increase creative output — not just generate deliverables faster

• You believe prototypes are often more valuable than decks

• You are highly collaborative and comfortable working in fast-moving environments with designers, engineers, operators, and product teams sitting side-by-side

• You have strong product intuition and can balance user value, trust, safety, business impact, and long-term platform health

• You care about designing responsibly for products that impact real people in real-world situations

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in product design, interaction design, creative technology, design engineering, or similar hybrid roles

• Strong portfolio demonstrating high-quality product thinking, interaction design, and systems thinking

• Comfortable prototyping in code or modern prototyping tools

• Fluency in tools such as Figma, Framer, Cursor, Protopie, Rive, v0, Claude, Perplexity or similar modern creative tooling

• Experience collaborating closely with Product and Engineering teams from concept through implementation

• Strong communication and storytelling skills around product and UX decisions

Nice To Have

• Experience designing for live, real-time, or feed-based products

• Experience with notifications, mapping, live video, or location-aware systems

• Background in behavioral design, interaction systems, or motion design

• Experience working on trust & safety, civic, operational, or mission-driven products

• Experience building AI-native user experiences or AI-assisted workflows

• Comfort creating rapid front-end prototypes in React, React Native, SwiftUI, or similar technologies

Why This Role Is Different

Most product design roles optimize interfaces. This role is about shaping how people experience reality in real time. You’ll work on products that influence:

• awareness

• trust

• urgency

• attention

• community coordination

• and public transparency

We believe the future of product design is:

• conversational

• systems-driven

• AI-assisted

• highly iterative

• emotionally intelligent

• and deeply interactive

If that sounds like your natural lane, we’d love to talk.

How To Apply

Send us:

• A short note about why this type of AI-native design role excites you

• A portfolio with examples of:

  • interaction design

  • prototypes

  • system-level product thinking

  • and examples where AI meaningfully expanded your creative or product exploration process

Your portfolio should demonstrate both polished product craft and the ability to explore ideas quickly through prototyping, interaction design, and AI-native workflows.

Salary Range
This role offers a base salary of $155,000–$215,000 per year, plus equity.

Compensation & Benefits
We offer competitive salary, equity, and a full benefits package, including:

• At least one fully employer-sponsored medical plan option

• Dental and vision coverage, with a small employee contribution

• Unlimited PTO

• Up to 14 weeks paid parental leave (for all parents)

• Monthly tech stipend

• Free mental health support

• Hybrid work environment + catered lunches (NYC HQ)

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Citizen
Citizen is an equal opportunity employer. We’re building a team that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve — across race, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, and background.

We know that diverse teams make better decisions and build more effective products. If you don’t meet every listed qualification, we still encourage you to apply. Skills, potential, and lived experience matter.