Founding Designer

Ideogram is on a mission to make professional-quality design accessible to everyone. We’re building an AI-native application that helps creative individuals and teams produce high-quality content faster and at a lower cost. We are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI, with a focus on creativity and a high standard for trust and safety. Our headquarters is in downtown Toronto, and we have a growing presence in NYC. Read our Ideogram 3.0 and Canvas blog posts, and try our product at ideogram.ai to get a glimpse of what we're building.

About The Role
As a Founding Designer, you will bring a deep understanding of people, design, and technology to help set the creative direction for our company. We’re looking for a genuinely curious designer who is passionate about crafting delightful and welcoming experiences that connect users, creators, technology, and the community.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the end-to-end design process, from ideation to final execution, ensuring simple, self-explanatory, and innovative user experiences.

• Collaborate closely with product, engineering, marketing, and other designers to align on priorities and deliver impactful, simple solutions.

• Lead the design of projects that push the boundaries of generative AI tools for image and video creation and editing, leveraging a deep understanding of their capabilities and limitations.

• Create rapid prototypes and interactive mockups to test, iterate, and communicate ideas effectively.

• Conduct user research and engage with beta testers to gather insights, validate designs, and refine the product experience.

• Balance high-quality design standards with project delivery timelines in a fast-paced startup environment.

• Set the creative and design vision for the company, fostering a culture of curiosity, exploration, and innovation.

Education And Experience

• 5+ years of experience as a Design or Creative Lead, with hands-on expertise in product design for consumer-facing products.

• A proven track record of successful and innovative projects, with a portfolio that highlights intuitive and delightful user experiences.

• Deep experience with generative AI tools and a strong understanding of their applications and constraints in creative workflows.

• The ability to think from first principles, approach problems with fresh perspectives, and develop effective solutions to new design challenges.

• Mastery of modern design tools (e.g., Figma) and graphic design software (e.g., Adobe Creative Suite).

• Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindset, with the ability to incorporate feedback and contribute to a dynamic, cross-functional team.

• A passion for connecting people, creators, and communities through simple, thoughtful, and creative design.

Founding Team

Our founding team consists of world-renowned AI experts including Mohammad Norouzi, Jonathan Ho, William Chan, and Chitwan Saharia. This team has previously led transformative AI projects at Google Brain, UC Berkeley, CMU, and the University of Toronto. Our fundamental work in AI includes: Imagen: Google’s text-to-image system, Imagen Video for video synthesis, Denoising Diffusion Models, which is the foundation of the recent generative media transformation.

Company Culture

We're a single flat team that transcends engineering, research, product, and operation roles. Everyone is willing to do whatever is necessary to make our company and customers successful. We believe that a small, dedicated team with a collaborative culture can move faster and build better and more coherent products than large hierarchical organizations. At Ideogram, we provide mentorship and support to help our employees grow with the company and achieve their ambitious career goals.

Ideogram is committed to welcoming everyone, regardless of gender identity, orientation, or expression. Our mission is to remove exclusivity and barriers and encourage new thinking and perceptions, in a space of belonging. It is not about race, gender, or age, it is about the people.