Thunderbird is expanding beyond email with Thunderbolt, an open-source AI client designed for organizations that need more control over their data, infrastructure, and model choices
We’re looking for a Staff Designer to help shape the product experience for Thunderbolt as it moves from early product development into enterprise use cases. This role sits at the intersection of product design, front-end engineering, prototyping, and AI-assisted product development
You’ll turn early product ideas, user needs, partner feedback, and workflow concepts into working prototypes and production-ready user experiences. This is not a role focused only on mockups or design artifacts. You’ll work directly in the codebase, use AI-assisted development tools thoughtfully, and help define the interaction patterns that make Thunderbolt intuitive, useful, trustworthy, and enterprise-ready
You should be comfortable operating independently in ambiguity, moving quickly from concept to prototype, distinguishing between experiments and production-ready work, and creating reusable product and interaction patterns that help the broader team move faster
Build functional prototypes and product experiments directly in the Thunderbolt codebase
Translate ambiguous product ideas, user workflows, partner feedback, and enterprise needs into clear, usable product experiences
Help define interaction patterns for AI-powered chat, search, research, workflow automation, knowledge retrieval, and enterprise administration
Use AI-assisted development tools to accelerate prototyping and implementation while maintaining strong judgment around quality, usability, security, accessibility, and maintainability
Partner closely with product, design, engineering, and enterprise-facing teams to explore, validate, and refine product direction
Contribute production-quality front-end code where appropriate
Identify when a prototype should be discarded, refined, generalized, or productionized
Improve the usability, accessibility, consistency, and polish of the Thunderbolt user experience
Help develop reusable components, interface patterns, or design-system elements that create leverage for the broader product team
Bring a user-centered perspective to technical and product discussions, especially where AI behavior, user trust, transparency, permissions, or workflow clarity are important
Consider enterprise needs when designing product experiences, including data sensitivity, user control, administrative visibility, auditability, and security expectations
Contribute to a product culture that values speed, clarity, experimentation, maintainability, responsible AI use, and thoughtful user experience
What success looks like:
In this role, you will help Thunderbolt move from ideas and early workflows into clear, usable, high-quality product experiences. You’ll create prototypes that clarify direction, reusable patterns that help the team move faster,



and production experiences that make AI-powered workflows easier to understand and trust
A successful Staff Design Engineer will help the team decide what is worth building, what needs more testing, and what should not move forward. You’ll raise the quality of Thunderbolt’s user experience while helping the product remain fast-moving, practical, and enterprise-ready
Work environment
You’ll work with our passionate staff and open-source community members from all over the globe to support the mission and objectives of MZLA Technologies Corporation. In this role, you’ll also collaborate closely with engineering, product, design, enterprise-facing teams, contractors, and external contributors working on Thunderbolt
Advantages Health and wellness: Mozilla covers medical, dental and vision plan premiums at 100% for U.S. and Canadian employees. Our offerings give you the options you need to manage your health — and your family’s — the way you want.
Mental health: Mental health is as important as our physical health. That’s why Mozilla’s health benefits include therapy and coaching sessions to make sure our people have access to the care they need.
Time away: With all of life’s demands, time away from work to disconnect and recharge is essential. In addition to country-specific holidays (12 in the U.S. and Canada), vacation and sick time start accruing right away (specifics vary by country). Everyone also takes a pause together on quarterly all-company wellness days, plus you get to celebrate the most personal holiday of all: your birthday.
Parental leave: While Mozilla’s parental leave policies vary globally, our U.S. and Canadian-based employees can look forward to 26 weeks of paid leave for childbearing parents and 12 weeks of paid leave for non-childbearing parents.
Financial: Mozilla is a private company, so our compensation isn’t tied to stock options or equity plans. Instead, we offer generous, performance-based bonus plans to all regular employees to underscore that we share in our success as one team. As for retirement savings for US and Canadian employees, Mozilla contributes a percentage of your eligible base salary each year to the 401(k) Plan/RRSP (regardless of whether you contribute or not), with 100% vesting.
Learning and development: We’re big believers in learning by doing, and we also want to invest in your education and development beyond your role. Every employee is eligible for an annual professional development budget. Mozillians can put it toward technical or management training, certifications, conferences and more.
Help when you need it:



Life is full of surprises; that’s why it’s important to be prepared. Mozilla provides Life/AD&D; and Short and Long Term Disability insurance (offerings may vary by locale) to ensure that you and your family will have a safety net in place should you ever need it.
Plus a bit more: A few other benefits include a quarterly wellbeing stipend (to use on those things just for you), an employee referral bonus, internet reimbursement if you’re remote, and a budget for office essentials to make working remotely ergonomically comfortable.
Experience & Requirements Experience designing, prototyping, or building AI-enabled product experiences, such as chat, search, research tools, agents, automation, knowledge interfaces, or workflow tools where user trust, context, output quality, and human oversight are central to the experience
Experience providing technical or product leadership through mentoring, cross-functional coordination, reusable patterns, project ownership, or influence beyond individual deliverables
Portfolio, case studies, shipped work, or examples demonstrating design-to-code execution, interactive prototypes, or product experience improvements
Experience translating ambiguous product concepts into usable workflows, prototypes, and shipped product experiences, with the judgment to balance speed, quality, maintainability, learning, and product risk
Strong front-end engineering skills, including experience with modern JavaScript or TypeScript, component-based frameworks, and building prototypes or production features directly in an application codebase
Practical awareness of AI, privacy, security, and regulatory considerations that may affect product experience, including transparency, user control, permissions, data handling, and trust; familiarity with frameworks such as the EU AI Act, Cyber Resilience Act, HIPAA, or comparable responsible AI, privacy, and security requirements
Strong communication and collaboration skills, including experience working closely with product managers, designers, engineers, and other cross-functional stakeholders
10+ years of relevant experience in design engineering, front-end engineering, UX engineering, product design with strong technical implementation experience, or a closely related role, with demonstrated leadership and impact beyond individual deliverables
Strong product and interaction design judgment, including usability, accessibility, information architecture, workflow design, and product polish
Experience with enterprise software, developer tools, productivity tools, collaboration tools, self-hosted software, or other technical user workflows
Experience contributing to design systems, component libraries, reusable front-end architecture, or shared product interaction patterns
Familiarity with user research, usability testing, product discovery, feature instrumentation, or rapid experimentation methods
Experience working in open-source or highly collaborative engineering environments

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📌 Staff Designer (Rapid Prototyping) (Quebec City)
🏢 Mozilla
📍 Quebec City