Intercom is the AI Customer Service company on a mission to help businesses provide incredible customer experiences.

Our AI agent Fin, the most advanced customer service AI agent on the market, lets businesses deliver always-on, impeccable customer service and ultimately transform their customer experiences for the better. Fin can also be combined with our Helpdesk to become a complete solution called the Intercom Customer Service Suite, which provides AI enhanced support for the more complex or high touch queries that require a human agent.

Founded in 2011 and trusted by nearly 30,000 global businesses, Intercom is setting the new standard for customer service. Driven by our core values, we push boundaries, build with speed and intensity, and consistently deliver incredible value to our customers.

Role Overview

We’re looking for a Staff AI Product Designer to shape what our AI does, how it behaves, and how it fits into real user workflows.

This role sits at the intersection of product, design, and machine learning—turning emerging capabilities into reliable, high-quality user experiences. You’ll design systems: behaviors, decisions, orchestration, and end-to-end experiences powered by AI.

This is not a traditional product design role. You’ll go beyond interface design to define how AI systems behave, operate, and deliver value in the real world—similar to emerging “AI Model Designer” roles, but more deeply embedded in product.

What You’ll Do

1. Define AI capabilities (the “what and why”)

Identify and pattern match high-value opportunities for AI across the product
Define what AI should do—and just as importantly, what it should not do, making hard or unpopular calls when needed
Set clear boundaries for autonomy vs human control

2. Design AI behavior, orchestration, and system logic

Architect AI-driven workflows and agentic systems that operate across real-world scenarios and over time, including multi-step and agent-to-agent interactions
Establish decision frameworks: when systems should act, ask, escalate, or defer
Design for uncertainty, failures, and edge cases as core system behavior
Develop and apply design principles and heuristics to shape how AI systems behave and make decisions
Ensure systems remain coherent and predictable, even as complexity scales

3. Shape human + AI workflows and end-to-end experience

Design experiences for users who are increasingly managing AI systems and agents
Design how AI integrates into real user workflows, not just isolated interactions
Define the role of the human in the loop: where users guide, review, or override
Ensure users can understand, trust, and recover from system failures
Partner with product designers to continuously shape and adapt the product experience as underlying systems evolve

4. Define quality, evaluation, and reliability

Define what “good” looks like (e.g. trust, accuracy, effort reduction, and whether outputs are structured and usable in context)
Design evaluation scenarios and feedback loops
Analyze outputs to identify failure modes and system weaknesses
Design for reliability at the system level, preventing agentic breakdowns

How You’ll Work

Shape direction from the earliest stages of zero-to-one problems
Influence across teams without formal authority
Operate in a highly autonomous, fast-moving environment with evolving constraints
Lead ambiguous, in-flight work—making calls on when to adapt the product vs. push on system improvements as things evolve
Act as a bridge between AI research, technical capabilities, and user needs
Collaborate deeply with ML scientists, PMs, and product designers
Prototype and run focused experiments that isolate variables and generate clear insights
Stay close to system behavior by regularly reviewing outputs and raising the bar on quality

What We’re Looking For

Strong product judgment—you consistently make high-quality calls on what to build and why
Ability to influence without authority
Experience working on zero-to-one products and comfort operating through ambiguity and rapid change
Deep understanding of LLMs and their limitations, along with a grounding in traditional ML approaches and when to use them instead
Experience defining design principles, heuristics, or evaluation criteria for AI systems
High standards for quality, with a track record of identifying where AI systems break down in real-world use
A scientific mindset—you can design experiments that isolate variables and produce meaningful insights
Systems thinker: you’re happier designing behaviors and flows than polishing interfaces
We’re open to non-traditional backgrounds (e.g. product managers, engineers, or others) if you have strong product sense and a track record of representing user needs in technical systems

What This Role Is Not

You will not be training models or building ML infrastructure
You will not be responsible for backend architecture or performance optimization
You will only occasionally design UI—this is not the focus of the role

You will influence all of these—but your primary responsibility is defining what should be built, how it should behave, and how it performs in the real world.

Why This Role Is Compelling

You’ll join a mature AI discipline operating at the frontier. Intercom already has an established AI Design team and strong cross-functional understanding of this role, so you can focus on building rather than justifying your value.
You won’t be “adding AI to a product.” The quality of our AI is the quality of our product. This is a technical, hands-on role where you have the satisfaction of working with tight feedback loops.
You’ll shape product direction, not just execution. You’ll operate upstream in a high-autonomy environment with real ownership over outcomes.

Benefits

We are a well treated bunch, with awesome benefits! If there’s something important to you that’s not on this list, talk to us!

Competitive salary and equity in a fast-growing start-up
We serve lunch every weekday, plus a variety of snack foods and a fully stocked kitchen
Regular compensation reviews - we reward great work!
Unlimited access to Claude Code and best-in-class AI tools; experimentation & building is encouraged & celebrated.
Pension scheme & match up to 4%
Peace of mind with life assurance, as well as comprehensive health and dental insurance for you and your dependents
Flexible paid time off policy
Paid maternity leave, as well as 6 weeks paternity leave for fathers, to let you spend valuable time with your loved ones
If you’re cycling, we’ve got you covered on the Cycle-to-Work Scheme. With secure bike storage too
MacBooks are our standard, but we also offer Windows for certain roles when needed.

#LI-Hybrid

Policies

Intercom has a hybrid working policy. We believe that working in person helps us stay connected, collaborate easier and create a great culture while still providing flexibility to work from home. We expect employees to be in the office at least three days per week.

We have a radically open and accepting culture at Intercom. We avoid spending time on divisive subjects to foster a safe and cohesive work environment for everyone. As an organization, our policy is to not advocate on behalf of the company or our employees on any social or political topics out of our internal or external communications. We respect personal opinion and expression on these topics on personal social platforms on personal time, and do not challenge or confront anyone for their views on non-work related topics. Our goal is to focus on doing incredible work to achieve our goals and unite the company through our core values.

Intercom values diversity and is committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity. Intercom will not discriminate against an applicant or employee on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, age, physical or mental disability, veteran or military status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law.

Staff AI Product Designer

Benefits

Job Description