Founding Product Designer

Why this role exists

Every building on earth starts with a decision made on incomplete information. Planso is the intelligence layer that ends that — collapsing a 25-hour site report into under an hour, then adding the thing no tool ever has: interpretation. What this data means for this site, this client, this firm.

Our users are the most visually demanding people on the planet — architects, urban planners, and sustainability specialists at firms like Perkins&Will, HOK, and Gensler. They will forgive a missing feature. They will never forgive an ugly one.

And every PNG, PDF, and slide that leaves Planso walks into a room full of decision-makers. The output is our distribution — you own the surface where the company's reputatio

Overview

We're hiring a founding product design engineer to own how Planso looks, feels, and behaves. This is a hybrid design + front-end role: you'll design the interface *and* build it. You'll shape core surfaces like map layer panels, domain analysis cards, stat-row tag systems, confidence badges, and cross-domain linking — the patterns that define the product.

Data-dense products live or die on design. Our users are visually sophisticated professionals who judge tools by their craft. Your job is to make complex, layered information feel effortless — and to set the design bar for everything Planso ships.

Responsibilities

- Own the end-to-end design of Planso's core product: maps, analysis cards, data visualization, and workflows from first insight to exported deliverable

- Build what you design — ship production-quality front-end code (React or similar) and own component quality, not just mockups

- Define and evolve Planso's design system: color, typography, spacing, tag vocabularies, iconography, and interaction patterns across domains

- Design for data density: layer controls, stat rows, badges, tooltips, and drill-down flows that stay legible under real-world data volume and variable data confidence

- Partner directly with the founder(s) and engineering on product decisions — you'll influence what we build, not just how it looks

- Prototype fast, test with real architects and designers, and iterate based on usage data (we run Clarity/GA and care about evidence)- Establish design foundations, documentation, and processes that scale as the team grows

What we're looking for

- 4+ years designing and shipping digital products, with real production front-end experience (HTML/CSS/JS, React or equivalent)

- A portfolio showing data-rich or map-based interfaces — dashboards, geospatial tools, analytics products, or design tools

- Strong systems thinking: you build coherent, reusable patterns, not one-off screens- Exceptional visual craft — typography, color, hierarchy, and micro-interaction quality that would impress a room full of architects

- Comfort with ambiguity and ownership: you can go from a vague problem to a shipped feature without a spec

- Clear written and verbal communication; you can defend design decisions with reasoning, not taste alone ## Nice to have- Experience with mapping libraries (Mapbox GL, MapLibre, deck.gl, Leaflet) or data-viz libraries (D3, Observable Plot)

- Background or genuine interest in architecture, urban design, GIS, or the built environment- Experience designing for professional/expert users rather than consumers

- Experience as an early or founding designer at a startup

Why join

**Founding influence.** You'll define the design language of the product from close to the ground floor, with a direct line to product

**A real design problem.** Making global environmental and health data usable for designers is genuinely hard and genuinely

**Craft-first culture.** We sweat the details — from color systems to confidence badges — and you'll have the mandate to do the same.

Please send your updated portfolio/resume along with a short email explaining why you'd like to join Planso and what excites you about joining planso to .