---
title: 'Senior Agentic Experience Designer (Contractor) at Firsthand'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-agentic-experience-designer-contractor-firsthand-new-york-an76h3evxv4b'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Senior Agentic Experience Designer (Contractor) at Firsthand

- **Company:** Firsthand
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-08-27
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/firsthand/d96c5240-3acf-49c5-96be-5efee77e23e6

## Job description

## About Firsthand

Firsthand has built the first AI-powered Brand Agent platform, transforming the way marketers and publishers engage consumers through their own AI agents, anywhere online. While most AI applications in marketing and advertising focus on back-office automation, the Firsthand Brand Agent Platform™ powers front-line consumer engagement. Operating across both owned properties and paid media, Firsthand's Brand Agents make a company’s expertise accessible in real time, adapting to consumers’ interests and guiding them towards the information they need to take action. Central to the platform is Lakebed™, the company’s AI-first data and knowledge rights management system that ensures brands retain full ownership and control of their expertise. Firsthand is led by Jon Heller, Michael Rubenstein, and Wei Wei, whose previous ventures helped build the foundations of modern digital advertising. Backed by Radical Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Aperiam Ventures, and Crossbeam Venture Partners, Firsthand is shaping the future of AI-driven consumer engagement. Firsthand is headquartered in NYC, with team members working together in-office three days a week.

Contract-to-hire | 3–6 Months

## About the Role

Firsthand is looking for a Senior Contract Agentic Experience Designer to rethink and optimize how users engage with AI-powered brand experiences across a portfolio of priority campaigns. Sitting at the intersection of interaction design, conversational UX, and growth design, you’ll translate campaign objectives into intentional, measurable user experiences by designing how users enter, navigate, engage with, and take action within an experience. This is not a traditional visual design role. We’re looking for someone who thinks deeply about user behavior, interaction patterns, experience progression, and measurable outcomes while designing within an existing product and technical framework. Initially a 3–6 month engagement, this role will support approximately 2–3 design-intensive campaigns at a time while helping us establish the principles and patterns for a scaled Agent Experience Design practice.

## What You’ll Do

- Translate campaign goals into intended user behaviors, experience strategies, and clear design hypotheses.
- Design end-to-end agent experiences, including composition, interaction patterns, content hierarchy, conversational flows, progression, and CTAs.
- Partner with Solutions Consulting to ensure experiences are technically feasible, measurable, and aligned with campaign objectives.
- Review behavioral and performance data to identify opportunities for iteration and optimization.
- Conduct pre-launch experience-quality reviews and ensure experiences meet the intended design strategy.
- Develop reusable interaction patterns, design principles, and frameworks across campaigns.
- Identify product configurability or instrumentation gaps that limit experience quality, measurement, or scalability.
- Partner with Product and Engineering on targeted improvements that unlock stronger, more reusable experiences.
- Help define the remit, skills, methods, and Product capabilities required for a permanent Agent Experience Design function.

## What We’re Looking For

Your background may resemble a Growth Designer, Interaction Designer, Conversational Designer, or performance-oriented Product Designer more than a conventional visual designer.

- Significant experience designing digital experiences where engagement, behavior, or conversion is a core measure of success.
- Strong interaction design skills across flows, states, progression, hierarchy, and calls to action.
- Experience with conversational interfaces, AI products, agent experiences, or emerging interaction models is highly valuable.
- Strong understanding of behavioral or growth-oriented UX and how design decisions influence user action.
- Experience developing design hypotheses and using quantitative signals to evaluate and improve experiences.
- Comfort interpreting performance data and translating insights into concrete design changes.
- Ability to design creatively within existing product and technical constraints.
- Strong cross-functional collaboration skills across technical, product, analytics, and client-facing teams.

## What You’ll Help Build

Beyond individual campaigns, your work will help establish the foundations of Firsthand’s Agent Experience Design practice, including reusable design principles and interaction patterns, a stronger approach to experience briefs and pre-launch QA, and recommendations for the Product and measurement capabilities needed to scale.

How to Apply If you are ready to embark on an exhilarating journey at the forefront of AI, seize this incredible opportunity and apply here. We eagerly anticipate hearing from you! Note: Compensation and equity will be market-competitive for well-capitalized, early stage startups and will be discussed during the interview process.

## About Firsthand

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Firsthand provides the first Brand Agent Platform that enables marketers and publishers to deploy AI-powered brand representatives to engage consumers directly across owned and paid media.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Jonathan Heller (co-CEO), Michael Rubenstein (co-CEO), Wei Wei (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI-powered marketing and advertising technology
- **Target customers**: B2B – marketers and publishers seeking to use AI agents for consumer engagement
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “AI isn’t just a new technology — it’s a new communication medium that enables brands to engage consumers directly, wherever they are.”

## Products & Services
- **[Brand Agent Platform™](https://www.firsthand.ai/)**: A SaaS platform that lets brands create custom AI agents (“Brand Agents”) that deliver personalized, real-time guidance to consumers on the brand’s own site, across paid media, and beyond. Agents are powered by the brand’s own knowledge and voice.
- **[Lakebed™](https://www.firsthand.ai/)**: An AI-first data and knowledge rights management solution that ensures brands retain full ownership and control of their content and data when sharing it with partners and AI agents. Enables secure, real-time data sharing without transferring ownership.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$32.6 million** (Seed + Series A)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Radical Ventures (lead), FirstMark Capital, Aperiam Ventures, Crossbeam Venture Partners
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew **80% YoY** to 41 employees (as of mid-2025); active hiring for key roles; founded by digital advertising veterans who built DoubleClick (Google), AppNexus (Microsoft), and Freewheel (Comcast)

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-mover in Brand Agent category**: Firsthand claims to be the industry’s first platform purpose-built for brand-owned AI agents.
- **Data rights management (Lakebed)**: Differentiates by giving brands full control over their intellectual property and data, addressing a key concern for enterprises adopting AI.
- **Founding team pedigree**: Leaders previously shaped programmatic advertising and streaming TV advertising at scale, bringing deep industry relationships and credibility.
- **Backed by top AI and ad-tech investors**: Radical Ventures (AI-focused) and FirstMark Capital (ad-tech focused) provide both capital and strategic guidance.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling the platform**: Currently hiring for product management (AI/ML), account executive (agency partnerships), and applied research scientist roles, indicating investment in product development and go-to-market.
- **Expanding publisher and marketer adoption**: Focus on shortening the path from consumer interest to action by deploying agents across multiple touchpoints.
- **Maintaining data control narrative**: Continues to emphasize Lakebed as a core differentiator for brands wary of losing data ownership.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: Values include “Partner for the win-win,” “Innovate with purpose,” “Small steps, big impact,” and “Understand, be understood.” Emphasis on meaningful solutions over hype.
- **Remote/hybrid policy**: Hybrid model – team works together in the New York City office three days a week; remote flexibility available.
- **Notable perks**: Unlimited PTO, 401(k) from day 1, zero-cost medical plans, paid parental leave. Benefits described as “constantly evolving.”
- **Engineering culture**: AI-first challenges, solving complex real-world problems at the forefront of generative AI. Team includes technologists, product leaders, and go-to-market experts with backgrounds in digital advertising, gaming, TV, and HR tech.
- **Leadership accessibility**: Led by proven entrepreneurs who have scaled companies to hundreds of millions in revenue; employees get exposure to industry veterans.

## Sources
1. [firsthand.ai](https://www.firsthand.ai/) – Company homepage and product description
2. [firsthand.ai/about](https://www.firsthand.ai/about) – About page, leadership, investors, values
3. [firsthand.ai/careers](https://www.firsthand.ai/careers) – Careers page, benefits, recruitment process
4. [linkedin.com/company/firsthand-labs](https://www.linkedin.com/company/firsthand-labs) – LinkedIn profile with funding, headcount, open positions, demographics
5. [builtin.com/company/firsthand](https://builtin.com/company/firsthand) – Built In profile with office location, open jobs, culture summary

## Other roles at Firsthand

- [Staff Product Manager, AI/ML](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-product-manager-ai-ml-firsthand-new-york-yy14x23rf1xb) — New York, NY