Staff Designer, Rapid Prototyping (AI)

Location: Remote within Canada or the United States only; applicants must reside in the selected country and have permanent work authorization. Visa sponsorship is not provided.

Salary: CAD 155,000–175,000 in Canada; USD 185,000–205,000 in the US.

Company

MZLA Technologies Corporation, part of the Mozilla family, develops open-source privacy-respecting communication and productivity tools through Thunderbird.

What you will do

• Build functional prototypes and product experiments directly in the Thunderbolt codebase.
• Translate ambiguous product ideas, workflows, partner feedback, and enterprise needs into usable product experiences.
• Define interaction patterns for AI-powered chat, search, research, workflow automation, knowledge retrieval, and enterprise administration.
• Use AI-assisted development tools and contribute production-quality front-end code.
• Collaborate with product, design, engineering, enterprise-facing teams, contractors, and open-source contributors.
• Improve usability, accessibility, consistency, trust, security, and maintainability through reusable components and interaction patterns.

Requirements

• 10+ years of relevant experience in design engineering, front-end engineering, UX engineering, or technically focused product design.
• Strong experience with modern JavaScript or TypeScript, component-based frameworks, and application-code prototyping.
• Strong product and interaction design judgment covering usability, accessibility, information architecture, workflow design, and polish.
• Experience designing or building AI-enabled experiences such as chat, search, research tools, agents, automation, or knowledge interfaces.
• Experience providing technical or product leadership through mentoring, reusable patterns, project ownership, or cross-functional influence.
• Practical awareness of AI, privacy, security, data handling, permissions, transparency, and responsible AI requirements.

Nice to have

• Experience with enterprise, developer, productivity, collaboration, or self-hosted software.
• Experience with design systems, component libraries, reusable front-end architecture, or shared interaction patterns.
• Familiarity with user research, usability testing, product discovery, instrumentation, or rapid experimentation.
• Experience working in open-source or highly collaborative engineering environments.

Culture & Benefits

• Fully remote work with schedule flexibility across a distributed organization.
• Company-provided laptop, monthly remote work stipend, annual bonus, and professional development stipend.
• 24 days of PTO, nine wellbeing days, public holidays, year-end shutdown, and additional paid leave.
• Health, dental, vision, disability, life, and employee assistance insurance.
• 401(k) or RRSP contributions, paid parental leave, and paid sick days.
• Access to Coursera, industry conferences, company gatherings, and wellbeing stipends.

Hiring process

• Submit a cover letter and complete screening questions with authentic, experience-based responses.
• Portfolio, case studies, shipped work, or interactive prototypes should demonstrate design-to-code execution and product improvements.