--- title: 'Founding Product Designer at Salient' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-product-designer-salient-san-francisco-y809xaazpm2f' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-09' --- # Founding Product Designer at Salient - **Company:** Salient - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $175k–$230k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-08-03 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/salient/4055f554-6ca8-4857-974c-5f112ffe0876 ## Job description ## ABOUT US Salient builds AI agents for regulated financial services. Our agents automate loan servicing, compliance, collections, recovery, insurance claims, and disputes for banks, captives, and specialty lenders. We are: - Backed by a16z and Y Combinator, with $75M raised in Series A funding - Cash flow positive and profitable, with mid eight figure ARR achieved in under two years - Already serving more than 20% of the auto lending industry - Processing millions of real customer calls and transactions every day - Fully deployed in production with major financial institutions - Actively expanding into new financial services segments - Building together in person in San Francisco We are deeply integrated with our customers, own the full technology stack, and move quickly to bring modern AI into regulated industries where precision, reliability, and performance matter. We are hiring our first product designer to shape the next phase of the product. You will work directly with product, engineering, customers, and leadership to improve how customers build, manage, monitor, and improve our agents. This is a hands-on role with broad ownership. You will help determine what we build, take projects from early ideas through launch, and establish the design foundation we need as the product grows. ## WHAT YOU’LL DO - Own product design from customer research and early concepts through launch and iteration - Design how customers configure, test, launch, monitor, and improve AI agents - Build workflows for conversation review, quality assurance, approvals, escalations, and human intervention - Improve how our agents communicate across voice, text, chat, and email - Make agent performance, behavior, and outcomes clear to customers - Simplify complex, data-heavy servicing workflows - Work directly with customers to understand their needs and test new ideas - Partner closely with product and engineering to shape priorities and ship quickly - Build Salient’s design system and shared product patterns - Create a consistent experience across our five live agents and future products - Use Figma, rapid prototypes, and AI tools to test ideas quickly - Help define how the design function grows over time ## WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - 5+ years of product design experience - Experience designing AI-powered products, agents, copilots, or human-in-the-loop systems - Experience designing complex B2B, enterprise, operational, or technical products - A portfolio showing work you personally owned from an ambiguous problem through launch - Strong interaction design, visual design, prototyping, and systems thinking - Experience designing monitoring, analytics, evaluation, or exception-management workflows - Experience working directly with customers and using feedback to shape the product - A track record of influencing product decisions rather than only executing requirements - Experience building or significantly improving a design system - Ability to design complete workflows, including permissions, edge cases, errors, and operational states - An understanding of how non-deterministic AI behavior affects trust, control, and product design - Experience partnering closely with engineers through implementation - Comfort using AI-assisted tools to prototype and explore ideas quickly - Strong communication and product judgment - Ability to work independently and create structure in a fast-moving environment At Salient, we’re building at the edge of AI - fast, focused, and with real ownership. Sprints and major launches move quickly, and we look for people who are energized by that pace. Our team typically works around 60 hours per week, beginning at 8:00 AM, with four days spent collaborating in person at our San Francisco office. We also offer a benefits package designed to support our full-time employees: medical, dental, and vision coverage, a generous 401(k), and catered lunches. By applying, you acknowledge that your personal information will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy https://www.trysalient.com/legal/privacy-policy. ## About Salient ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Salient builds AI-native loan servicing agents that automate collections, disputes, and loss mitigation for US consumer lenders. - **Entity Type**: Private (Funded: $75M total raised) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Mukund Tibrewala (CEO) and Arijit Malik (CTO) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Consumer lending / Fintech / AI workflow automation - **Target customers**: B2B – banks, credit unions, auto lenders, and fintechs operating in US consumer lending. - **Mission**: To lower the cost of credit for every American by building AI that is reliable, auditable, and compliant. ## Products & Services - **Taylor 2.0**: AI agent for inbound and outbound collections calls with native FDCPA, TCPA, and CFPB compliance. Handles end-to-end conversations, negotiations, and payment promises. - **Marshall 1.4**: Agent for GAP claim automation and appraisal-clause deadline management. - **Flyn 1.2**: Agent for dispute and chargeback resolution. All products are designed with borrower-level memory, cross-channel context, and exam-ready audit trails. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: ~$500M (as of late 2025, per Y Combinator; conflicting reports may exist) - **Key Metrics**: - Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): $25M (per Y Combinator, 2025) - LinkedIn reports $4.7M annual revenue (likely earlier or GAAP vs ARR difference) - Daily active users: agents touch more than 1.5 million Americans every day - **Total Funding**: $75M across seed and Series A - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz (led $60M Series A), Matrix Partners, Y Combinator; selected by JPMorgan Chase for Hall of Innovation - **Growth Signals**: Team grew 185% YoY to ~46 employees; 8 open roles as of mid-2025; expanded law repository and LMS-level compliance features in 2026 releases. ## Competitive Advantages - **Compliance-first design**: Built from the ground up inside lender operations to meet CFPB, state-level, and supervisory expectations. - **Borrower-level memory**: Every interaction updates a persistent profile across promises, hardships, disputes, and escalation history. - **Embedded origin**: Co-developed with some of the largest US consumer lenders – not a generic AI applied post-hoc. - **Audit-ready**: Full logging, exam-ready reporting, and rule-level control out of the box. ## Strategic Focus - Deepening product coverage for auto lending and expanding into more consumer lending verticals (credit cards, personal loans). - Strengthening compliance capabilities with expanded law repositories and LMS-level control. - Scaling deployments across existing launch partners and acquiring new bank/credit union clients. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Early-stage startup environment with deep domain focus; founded by former Tesla/Goldman Sachs (Mukund) and Airtable/Dropbox (Arijit). Emphasis on building inside the problem. - **Location**: San Francisco headquarters; roles listed as SF with a hybrid/office presence expected. - **Team**: ~46 people with heavy engineering/technical composition (46% of workforce). High autonomy and ownership. - **Perks/Notable**: Backed by top-tier VCs; opportunity to shape AI infrastructure for a highly regulated industry; roles span engineering, product, and operations. ## Sources 1. [trysalient.com](https://www.trysalient.com/) 2. [trysalient.com/company](https://www.trysalient.com/company) 3. [ycombinator.com/companies/salient](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/salient) 4. [linkedin.com/company/salientai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/salientai) ## Other roles at Salient - [Founder's Office](https://feeny.ai/job/founder-s-office-salient-san-francisco-v1nwwbzwvs4s) — San Francisco, CA - [Strategic Finance & Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-finance-operations-salient-san-francisco-4fk4vpbm69tm) — San Francisco, CA - [Full Stack Engineer, Front-End](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-engineer-front-end-salient-san-francisco-5ggw0z7ychdt) — San Francisco, CA - [AI Deployment Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-deployment-lead-salient-san-francisco-4myp38c0xp1b) — San Francisco, CA - [Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-recruiter-salient-san-francisco-0kpdk6ged8e8) — San Francisco, CA - [Applied AI Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ai-engineer-salient-san-francisco-f3xrvzdyawaq) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer, Product](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-product-salient-san-francisco-9g5sfd1t4zp5) — San Francisco, CA - [Infrastructure Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/infrastructure-engineer-salient-san-francisco-tqh62zx42aed) — San Francisco, CA - [Head of People](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-salient-san-francisco-25521af0w19p) — San Francisco, CA - [Sr Software Engineer, Product](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-software-engineer-product-salient-san-francisco-zda7ajc64zpt) — San Francisco, CA