Founding Design Engineer

Cardboard is an agentic video editor for growth/marketing teams and serious creators who need to ship videos consistently. Instead of agencies, long timelines, and infinite review cycles, teams give cardboard a footage + a goal (“3 variants”, “30s hook”, “testimonials”) to get a strong first cut in minutes on which they can iterate quickly.

Cardboard believes AI video creation should make creators faster without taking the creative control out of their hands.

Its editor brings generation, editing, and export into one place, and learns how each creator works along the way.

As Founding Design Engineer at Cardboard, you will own how its browser-based video editor looks, moves, and responds.

You will design and build interactions across the timeline, preview, and agent interface. The role requires strong frontend craft, product taste, and close attention to performance.

You will work with the co-founder, design, and engineering leads.

• The editor interaction system. Shape how the timeline, preview, and agent interface respond to users.
• Frame-level interaction quality. Catch dropped frames, stutters, and rough transitions, then fix them.
• Motion and visual effects. Build controllable animation, shaders, and effects for frame-accurate editing.
• Agent-generated interface rules. Set guidelines that keep generated UI consistent with Cardboard's product language.
• Predictive editing interactions. Make suggested next actions feel natural within the editing flow.
• Campaign design and delivery. Design approved campaign work in Figma and ship it end to end.

• Built polished interfaces in React. You can show how your implementation choices changed the feel of a product.
• Designed and shipped your own work. You moved from Figma through review to production without a handoff.
• Created motion for the web. You can explain timing, easing, and the performance costs behind your choices.
• Improved a complex interaction. You diagnosed friction across states, feedback, responsiveness, and recovery.
• Built from zero to one. You made sound product calls while patterns, requirements, and systems were still forming.
• Used coding agents with judgment. You can defend the architecture and details behind AI-assisted work.

• Own the full path to production. Take an interaction from an idea through design, review, implementation, and polish.
• Notice the smallest rough edge. Treat dropped frames, weak easing, and unclear feedback as product problems.
• Explain every design choice. Make the reasoning behind the interaction clear, including AI-assisted implementation.
• Ship in weekly cycles. Keep scope tight, learn from the product, and improve the next release.
• Use AI with judgment. Work quickly with coding agents while retaining command of the underlying decisions.
• Stay curious about the craft. Keep learning across frontend systems, motion, graphics, and interaction design.
• Work flexibly with the team. Collaborate from the Bengaluru office or remotely for this role.

Base pay is upto ₹60L a year. Equity ranges from 0.1% to 0.5% through founding ESOPs. You will work with the co-founder and technical leads across the editor. The role gives you ownership of how a browser-based creative tool feels.