Founding UX Designer
- Cambridge, United Kingdom
Posted 3 days ago
About the role
THE ROLE
The problems Neutreeno is trying to solve are genuinely hard. Emissions data is messy, deeply hierarchical, and full of uncertainty. Our users sit inside some of the largest companies in the world and span operations, finance and sustainability, each with different mental models and different definitions of "good". Your job is to make that complexity feel obvious, and to make the resulting insight something a decision-maker acts on.
You'll set the design direction and build the system everyone else designs and builds within. Not a Figma library that gathers dust: we expect it structured so prototypes can be spun up in no time and engineers and AI coding agents can build production UI from it directly.
You'll also own how we listen to our customers, building the structures that make continuous client engagement part of the fabric of how Neutreeno operates.
This is our first full-time UX design hire, and you will be our only and lead designer. This is a hands-on role from day one, with a path to leading an expanded design function as we grow. The product's design is yours to own.
This position operates on a hybrid work model with a minimum of 2 days per week in our Cambridge office.
Requirements
THE WORK YOU’LL DO
Product Design
- Own the end-to-end design of the product, from problem framing and information architecture through to interaction detail and shipped UI.
- Make complex, uncertain, hierarchical emissions data legible and actionable for operations, finance and sustainability audiences.
- Set the visual and interaction direction, and raise the bar on craft across everything we ship.
- Prototype fast and often.
Design System, Built AI-First
- Define, build and maintain the Neutreeno design system: foundations, components, patterns, content and data-visualisation standards.
- Architect it to be machine-readable and AI-native so AI coding tools and agentic workflows can build against reliably.
- Make the system the fastest path to both a prototype and production UI.
- Champion AI-native design and development practices across the team.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work shoulder-to-shoulder with our software engineers, translating design intent into well-scoped work that ships reliably to our customers.
- Partner with the Head of Product on discovery, roadmap and prioritisation.
- Work with our climate engineers to understand the methodology behind the numbers, and represent uncertainty, assumptions and data quality honestly in the interface.
Customer Engagement and Research
- Design and run the structures that make client engagement continuous and systematic: design partner programmes, regular usability sessions, feedback channels, and a clear route from what we hear to what we build.
- Embed those structures across the company so engagement is a shared habit rather than a design activity.
- Run discovery research on new product capabilities: what to build, for whom, and what "good" looks like.
- Measure whether shipped work moved the needle, and feed that back into the roadmap.
THE MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS YOU NEED
- 7 or more years of professional product or UX design experience, with a portfolio you can talk through in depth.
- Proven experience designing complex B2B, enterprise or data-heavy products.
- Demonstrable experience defining and running a design system, including how engineering consumes it.
- Strong craft across research, information architecture, interaction design and visual design.
- Real, daily use of AI tools as a core part of how you work, whether for prototyping, design system tooling, research synthesis or generating production-ready UI.
- Experience running research and usability sessions directly with customers, and turning what you learn into decisions.
- A track record of shipping high-quality work at pace, with high autonomy and little process.
- Strong communication and the ability to build trust quickly across engineering, product, science and leadership
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience as an early or founding designer at an early-stage startup.
- Comfort working in and around code, enough to read a component, ship a small front-end change, or hold a credible conversation about implementation trade-offs.
- Experience designing data visualisation for analytical products, including communicating uncertainty.
- Experience building AI-powered product features, or designing for agentic and LLM-driven interfaces.
- Exposure to climate, sustainability, supply chain, manufacturing or deep-tech domains.
Benefits
WHAT NEUTREENO CAN OFFER YOU
Compensation & Benefits:
- Competitive pay dependent on your skills, qualifications and experience.
- 25 days annual leave.
- Year-end performance bonus.
- Meaningful equity stake. We want you to think and benefit like an owner as the company grows.
- Company pension with NEST.
- Leading private health insurance with WPA (the only Which? Recommended Provider for Private Medical Insurance).
- Cycle to work scheme.
Work Environment:
- A hybrid work model that fosters both teamwork and individual flexibility.
- Remote working allowance of 2 weeks per year for personal travel, in addition to regular holiday policy.
- Work from Neutreeno HQ at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, recognised by the FT as one of Europe's leading startup hubs.
- Great on-site amenities (unlimited free coffee, regular events with global sustainability leaders, and more).
Culture & Growth:
- A diverse, fast-growing team that has grown 200%+ YoY, recently closed a $5M seed round and was just named one of Gartner's Coolest Vendor Innovations in Supply Chain Sustainability for 2026.
- An open-minded, non-hierarchical culture where everyone vectors in the same direction and ideas and ownership matter.
- The chance to work alongside world-class climate scientists and engineers on one of the most important problems of our time.
- A founding seat in the design function, with the scope to grow into leading it.
To apply, send your CV and a cover letter covering the following: a complex product you designed and what made it hard, how AI tooling features in your day-to-day design work, and what's drawing you to Neutreeno specifically.
Neutreeno is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating an inclusive workplace.