Head of Consumer Product

AI intimacy is a proven category with millions of users and hundreds of millions in funding. But every major player is optimizing for engagement, creating products that make people worse at human relationships.

Lawsuits, suicides, sycophancy. The entire category is under regulatory scrutiny.

But this isn't a category problem. It's a product problem.

Current AI companions fail because they're designed to maximize time-in-app, not prosocial user outcomes. The result: parasocial relationships, dependency patterns, and products that make people worse at social connection.

Meanwhile, there's a massive underserved market: 41% of Americans want social and wellbeing support but only 9% use AI. Not because the demand isn't there, but because the available products fail people. That's the gap you'd fill.

We're pioneering social AI that helps users practice healthy relating with an AI partner, then introduces them to other people on the same journey.

Our Relational Reinforcement Learning (RRL) optimizes for measurable indicators of human thriving (conflict repair, emotional regulation, decreased defensiveness, more real-world connections) instead of engagement. 

​We want to meet you if you've built consumer products before and are unsatisfied with good enough. You're done with the default and have high conviction that we can improve social outcomes by building tech differently.

What You’ll Build

Your job is creating the experience layer that turns sophisticated relational AI into something people love using — not because it validates them, but because it genuinely makes them better at being human.

​​​First-Principles Thinking

• Retention mechanics that challenge, not churn: Build without dark patterns. Think game dynamics that keep users engaged because they're thriving and leveling up, not because the experience is manipulative.
• Gamification that transfers: Design off-app quests and progress systems where "winning" means improving real-world relationships, not app metrics.​
• Trust-building UX: Communicate "this AI will push back" as a feature, not a bug. Make friction feel safe.
• Human matchmaking: AI-facilitated introductions between users. Double opt-in systems. Bridging digital practice to real connection.
• Habit building and measurement: Track outcomes that matter (off-app social time, conflict repair speed, emotional regulation) not just engagement.
• Category creation: Define what social AI means. It's not therapy (too clinical where this is relational), dating apps (we're going to replace them), or existing AI companions (we're the opposite).
   

This Includes​

• Product strategy, roadmap, and go-to-market for a category that doesn't exist yet: social AI for relational skill-building that is a league apart from anything users have experienced in LLM-based conversations
• Balancing delight with integrity (no dark patterns)
• Metrics that measure real outcomes, not vanity numbers
• User research and feedback loops that inform both product and AI training
• Onboarding flows that communicate "this AI pushes back" without scaring people away
• Gamification and quest design that makes relational practice feel intrinsically rewarding
• Agent-based matchmaking features that bridge simulation to real-world connection
• Retention mechanics that challenge rather than churn
• Go-to-market strategy for a category that doesn't exist yet
• Community building around users who've experienced what healthy relating feels like

Your Core Challenge

Building and managing the product experience, positioning, and proof points that make skeptical audiences trust something entirely new in a space filled with toxicity.

​What You'll Need​

​Skills Required

• ​Shipped consumer products that reached scale (100K+ users)
• Deep product intuition - you know why people use things and why they stop
• Experience with social, health, or behavior-change products
• Technical competency to collaborate with AI engineers (you don't need to code, but you need to understand ML constraints, latency trade-offs, and what's technically feasible)
• Hands-on experience with prompt engineering and LLM behavior tuning
• Ability to translate user needs into technical requirements and vice versa
• User research and data-driven iteration
• Understanding of retention, engagement, and monetization
• Comfort with ambiguity and 0-1 product development
• Working knowledge of LLM capabilities, limitations, and product implications
• Experience designing for emotional or high-stakes contexts
• Category definition and positioning for products that don't fit existing boxes
• Self-starter comfortable with 0-1 startup chaos

​Also Valuable

• Background in mental health, coaching, therapy, or relational work
• Experience with games, gamification, or learning systems
• Understanding of community building and user-generated networks
• Design sensibility (even if you're not the one pushing pixels)
• Previous founding team or early startup experience
• Genuine curiosity about what makes relationships actually work
• Experience repositioning products away from toxic category associations
• Experience with conversational AI, chatbots, or character AI systems
• Understanding of multi-turn dialogue design and conversation flows
• Familiarity with evals, testing frameworks, and measuring AI quality

Apply

This is a founding team position, not just a gig.​ If you're looking to get in early at a venture startup building the future of relational intelligence infrastructure, we'd love to meet you.

We're raising now and expect to close in the next few months. You'd be joining before we can pay market rate, but with the upside of a true founding team role. We offer competitive contractor compensation and meaningful founding engineer equity.

Send your resume and something you've built to [email protected]. A link to code, a project, a writeup. Show us how you think.