Senior Agentic Designer; Contractor

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, First Mark 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

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.

• 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.

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.

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.

Note:

Compensation and equity will be market-competitive for well-capitalized, early stage startups and will be discussed during the interview process.