Staff Product Designer
vitalize · San Francisco HQ · hybrid
USD 230,000 to 250,000 · period not stated
OUR VISION
Health systems still run critical operations like staffing, labor planning, and capacity on spreadsheets, phone calls, and guesswork.
Vitalize is building the AI operating system for how health systems manage labor and capacity. The impact is real: we save hospitals millions in unnecessary labor spend, give clinical leaders back 10–20 hours every week, and are often the reason staff and leaders stay.
We’re trusted by leading health systems across the country and have raised more than $31M from top healthcare and technology investors, including our own customers.
OUR VALUES
We hire and grow everyone against the same four values. Each one comes from a real Vitalize story—interview with us to hear them!
- 🚗 Push the Car. Step in regardless of role. We help wherever we're needed, own problems end to end, and don't stay in our lane. People can count on us.
- 🏥 Premier 1K. We show up for our customers, always. Nearly everyone visits a customer site in their first month, and customer feedback informs everything we do.
- 🗣️ Run Towards the Ugly. Name the ugliest truth first, then propose the fix. Candor over comfort—we call out what's broken, and never get complacent. This shapes our craft.
- 💡 Think Bigger Fridays. See the gap, fill it—no permission required. Every decision is an experiment: we run it, let the results decide, and drive real impact from day one.
ABOUT VITALIZE'S DESIGN TEAM
Design at Vitalize is grounded in a deep understanding of the people and systems that power healthcare. We spend time in hospitals, learn how work happens from the frontline to the C-suite, and use those insights to design products that make complex operational decisions easier. We care deeply about craft, but we believe great design starts with getting the workflow right—not just the interface. As a small team, we work closely with Product and Engineering, share work early, challenge each other’s thinking, and stay close to the customers using what we build.
THE ROLE
You’ll be the third product designer at Vitalize, joining at a stage where you’ll help define not just what we build, but how we design. You’ll set the design direction for our most complex and strategic product areas, partnering closely with product and engineering leadership to turn ambiguous, high-stakes problems into clear, intuitive experiences.
We want design at Vitalize to be AI-first, and we’ll be honest: we’re not there yet. We’ve started using AI for early exploration and prototyping, but we don’t have a consistent workflow or clear best practices. A big part of this role is changing that. You’ll help define what an AI-first design process looks like here: how we use AI to explore more ideas, prototype faster, and get to real customer feedback sooner, without lowering the craft bar.
You’ll also shape how AI shows up in the product itself, design across data-dense, AI-powered workflows, lead the evolution of our design system, and set a consistently high bar for everything we ship as Vitalize scales.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
- Build our AI-first design workflow: figure out how AI fits into every stage of our design process, from exploration and prototyping to production. Set the best practices, workflows, and quality standards the team adopts
- Lead by example: use AI daily to explore, prototype, and test ideas quickly, then bring the strongest directions to production quality
- Set design direction across the product: lead design for our most complex, cross-cutting product areas from discovery through launch, and shape the long-term product vision alongside Product and Engineering leadership
- Design complex, workflow-heavy experiences: make data-dense operational tools intuitive for users ranging from central staffing teams and unit managers to frontline clinicians
- Shape how AI shows up in the product: decide where AI meaningfully improves workflows and how its recommendations, reasoning, and actions appear, so clinical and operational users can trust and act on them
- Work directly with customers: visit hospitals, observe real workflows, lead research, and translate what you learn into product decisions and strategy
- Influence the roadmap: question the underlying workflow, find opportunities beyond the immediate request, and connect design decisions to customer and business outcomes
- Raise the bar for the whole team: mentor other designers, lead critique, and build the practices, rituals, and quality standards that help a small design team do exceptional work
WHAT YOU’LL BRING
- 8+ years of product design experience, including significant time designing complex, workflow-heavy B2B SaaS products, with a portfolio that shows end-to-end ownership of high-impact, ambiguous problems, from problem definition through shipped product and measurable outcomes
- An AI-first design workflow you can teach: AI is already central to how you design, you have a clear point of view on where it speeds up the process, where it falls short, and how to keep quality high, and you’re excited to help a team build that muscle
- Experience designing AI-powered products: you’ve shipped experiences where AI makes recommendations or takes action, and you think carefully about trust, transparency, and when a human should stay in the loop
- Exceptional product instincts and craft: you look beyond the immediate UI, challenge whether the workflow itself is right, and turn complicated systems into experiences that feel simple
- Strategic influence: you set direction, not just respond to requests, and can align product, engineering, and leadership around a design vision backed by evidence
- A customer- and outcomes-oriented mindset: you’re comfortable in hospitals observing operational workflows firsthand, and you connect your work to measurable impact for customers and the business
- Design systems leadership: you’ve built or led the evolution of a design system and know how to balance consistency with the speed of an early-stage company
- A multiplier on the team: you’ve mentored designers, raised the craft bar through critique, and shaped how a design team works, and you’re excited to stay hands-on while helping build the function
BENEFITS
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- 401(k) with company match
- Flexible PTO
- Unlimited travel budget to visit customer sites
- Twice-yearly company off-sites
- Free meals in-office
- $5,000 relocation bonus for eligible employees
- Desk setup reimbursement
- Commuter benefits
- Monthly gym/wellness stipend
- An awesome office in Jackson Square, steps from the water