Design Engineer

Our Mission

The AI Robot Association (AIRoA) is on a mission to build the world's most powerful Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models for humanoid robots. We are collecting one million hours of real-world operation data across hundreds of humanoid platforms — an unprecedented scale that will define the next generation of physical AI.

What makes us different: everything we build is open. Our datasets, trained models, and benchmarks are available to the global research community. Researchers anywhere can evaluate their models on standardized humanoid robots through our open evaluation platform. We're not just building technology — we're building a shared robot data ecosystem.

The Role

As our UI/UX Engineer, you will own the design and frontend experience for the software that powers our physical AI platform. This includes tools for robot data collection and annotation, model training dashboards, the open evaluation platform used by researchers worldwide, and internal tools for our robotics operations team.

This is a hands-on, end-to-end role. You'll shape product strategy with leadership, design and prototype solutions, build production-quality UI, and establish the design system that scales with us. You'll be our first dedicated design hire — which means you'll define how design works here.

What you will do

• Lead UI/UX design from concept through implementation for AIRoA's suite of physical AI software products
• Design and prototype interfaces for data annotation tools, model training dashboards, and the open robot evaluation platform
• Implement production frontend code (React) for the experiences you design — approximately 60% design, 40% development
• Build and maintain our design system, establishing patterns, components, and documentation that enable the team to move fast with consistency
• Collaborate closely with ML researchers, robotics engineers, and product leadership to translate complex technical workflows into intuitive interfaces
• Drive design quality assurance by ensuring that what ships matches design intent, and making necessary revisions when it doesn't
• Shape design team operations, including processes, tooling, and quality standards as the team grows

What Success Looks Like

In your first 3 months

• You've shipped meaningful UI improvements to at least one core product surface
• You've established the foundational design system (tokens, core components, documentation)
• You've built trusted relationships with the engineering and research teams

In your first 6 months

• You've led the end-to-end redesign or launch of a major product feature
• The design system is actively used by engineers and reduces design-to-code friction
• You're contributing to product strategy conversations and influencing roadmap decisions

Requirements

Required Qualifications

• Hands-on UI/UX design experience for web-based products, with a strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end product thinking
• Production frontend development experience with React, Next.js, Vue.js, or Angular, with the ability to build what you design
• Track record of leading multiple product launches as the primary designer, from early concepts through post-launch iteration
• Experience proactively identifying user problems and designing solutions, not just executing on briefs
• Demonstrated ability to ensure design quality in production — you care about the details between Figma and the browser
• Professional proficiency in Japanese (business communication with stakeholders)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing UI/UX for products that interface with hardware, robotics, or IoT devices
• Practical knowledge of Object-Oriented UI (OOUI) information architecture and modeling
• Hands-on experience with user research methodologies — from study design through insight synthesis
• Experience building UX research infrastructure: standardizing processes, templates, and tooling for scalable research operations
• Familiarity with data visualization for ML/AI workflows (training metrics, model performance, data quality dashboards)

Work Style & Culture

We're a small, research-driven team where everyone's work has outsized impact. Our engineers and researchers sit side by side, which means you'll have direct access to the people building and using our robots. We value clarity over ceremony — we'd rather see a thoughtful prototype than a 40-page spec.

• Core collaboration hours with flexibility around them
• Direct access to leadership and fast decision-making
• International team — daily communication in both Japanese and English