Head of Product Design & User Research

Job Type: Location Type: On-site

 

The Problem

Severe mental illness affects over 15 million adults in the United States. Schizophrenia. Schizoaffective disorder. Bipolar I. Treatment-resistant depression. These are the conditions the rest of healthcare has systematically failed to build for.

What makes this problem different from most of healthcare is that the tools to solve it do not exist. The clinical protocols, the measurement science, the precision medicine, the technology to deliver coordinated longitudinal outpatient care for this population. None of it has been built. This is a frontier problem, and it requires frontier science and care delivery to solve.

We are developing all of it. The care, the science, the technology.

Who We Are

Amae Health is a Series B, venture-backed Public Benefit Corporation delivering specialty outpatient care for people with severe mental illness through high-acuity, in-person clinics nationwide.

Our integrated model brings psychiatry, therapy, primary care, dietitians, and community support together under one roof. Leading health systems-including NewYork-Presbyterian, Cedars-Sinai, Mass General Brigham, Novant Health, and CommonSpirit-partner with us to expand this level of care.

Alongside care delivery, we are building the science and technology the field has long lacked-proprietary clinical protocols, novel measurement, and an AI-driven data platform designed for severe mental illness.

The impact: fewer hospitalizations, greater stability, and more people living meaningful lives in their communities.

The Team

We are clinicians, operators, technologists, and scientists who chose Amae because the problem is hard and the stakes are real. We are not interested in incremental improvements to a broken system

Our teams work cross-functionally because the work demands it. The psychiatrist informs the product roadmap. Engineers understand the clinical complexity their technology must solve. Researchers sit alongside the operators running the clinics their work measures.

Every function-finance, product, people, growth, technology-exists to serve one goal: better outcomes for the people we care for.
The Opportunity

“Amae” means “the ability to depend on those around you.” As our first Head of Product Design & User Research, you will design and perform research for our two flagship platforms, transforming them from utilities into delightful experiences that patients and clinicians actually love to use.

• Amae Care (for clinicians): You will simplify complex medical data into actionable insights. You will make it intuitive and seamless to allow our providers to focus entirely on the best possible care for the person in front of them.
• Amae Better (for patients): Most medical apps feel like a chore; you feel to your core that they’re not good enough. You will make Amae Better a delightful, essential part of a member’s day-even for those experiencing severe mental illness. You will design a product that provides genuine support and connection, rather than just data entry

What You’ll Work On

• UX Innovation & Design: Partner with CPO and all stakeholders to elevate our product design. You will solve complex UI challenges: make health software delightful, alleviate user anxiety around tech and AI, ensure accessibility for users with mental illness.
• Boots-on-the-Ground Research: Spend significant time in our clinics user testing our product with clinicians and patients. You will transform insights into high-fidelity prototypes that shine.
• Improve Adoption & Rollout: Work closely with the entire product & engineering team to help with the narrative, training materials, “go-to-market” messaging, and feedback mechanisms that encourage users to embrace our tech-enabled care and improve our product.
• AI-Native Workflow: Build designs optimized for agentic coding workflows and translation into production code, leveraging quickly evolving AI tools to keep pace with our high-growth environment.
• Scrappy Execution: You’ll jump in wherever needed and make it happen! We’re a startup where no task is too small and nothing is “not in my job description”. One day you might be redesigning the patient dashboard; the next, you might be assembling furniture or triaging support tickets.

Requirements

• The “Generalist” Toolkit: You are a UI/UX designer who is equally comfortable conducting a user interview, building a Figma prototype, and writing a training manual.
• Design Experience: You have5+ years of experience building and shipping high-fidelity product designs, with deep proficiency in Figma, modern prototyping tools, and maintaining design systems.
• User Research Experience: You have experience extracting honest qualitative clinic feedback and using it to drive better products.
• Incredible Written, Visual, & Verbal Communication: You can understand, translate, and communicate complex medical, technical, legal, etc. concepts between engineers, clinicians, patients, and everyone else in the Amae universe.
• Urgency & Execution through Ambiguity: You have thrived in high-growth environments where the playbook didn’t exist, and you had to build it yourself. You have experience balancing rapid iteration with high-quality design discipline.
• AI Fluency: You are an early adopter of AI tools for design, research, collaboration, development, and deployment. You see AI as a way to “supercharge” your output and keep the team lean.
• Accessible Empathy: You have experience (or a deep interest) in designing for vulnerable populations. You understand that “simple” is often the hardest thing to design.
• Mission Alignment: You have a deep, intrinsic desire to improve mental health care.
• Local: Ability to work full time in person in our San Francisco HQ.

What We’re Building

Most healthcare companies ask you to optimize an existing system. We’re building one that has never existed.

• A national care model designed for the highest-acuity patients in behavioral health.
• Precision medicine for severe mental illness, using multimodal clinical, behavioral, and social data to personalize treatment.
• A clinical operating system that integrates longitudinal data, real-time patient signals, and purpose-built tools into a single decision layer.
• New science and measurement frameworks to define what real outcomes look like in SMI-stability, functional improvement, and hospitalizations avoided.
• A health-system partnership model proving coordinated SMI care can work at scale.

If you want to maintain the status quo, this isn’t the place. If you want to build what doesn’t exist yet-and change how an entire population receives care-keep reading.
What We Provide

• Health Insurance: Comprehensive medical, dental & vision plans
• Competitive compensation
• Employee Assistance Program
• 401(k)
• FSA & HSA savings programs
• Short & long-term disability
• Pre-tax commuter assistance program
• Unlimited paid time off (PTO)
• Parental Leave – 12 weeks for birth and non birth parent
• 11 company holidays

Amae Health is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices.

Base salary range for this role is $215,000 to $255,000 per year based on level and a full-time schedule and the compensation package will include equity. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate’s experience and professional leveling and it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range. These factors include, but are not limited to, job related knowledge and skill set, depth of experience, certifications, degrees, licensures, and specific work location.
More About Amae

‘Amae’, pronounced ‘Ah-mai’, is a Japanese concept meaning the need to be in good favor with, and the ability to depend on, the people around oneself. It reflects our core belief that a strong support system is essential to build people up, strengthen their will to carry on and even to thrive in life. This mentality applies across our whole company – from the patients we serve to the team we’re building.

We’re a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) that provides outpatient psychiatric and primary care health services through value-based care arrangements. Our model’s success is predicated upon achieving outcomes for our patients, not on the volume of services provided.

What We Value

We center care in all we do. Empathy is not a brand value. It’s how we make clinical decisions, build products, and treat each other.

We challenge convention. The existing system is the problem. We question it, we test alternatives, and we move with urgency when something works.

We take the work seriously, not ourselves. High standards and humanity are not in tension. We hold a hard bar for quality while leaving room for humor and levity.

Your job isn’t done until the job is done. We close gaps, we follow through, and we don’t hide behind titles or org charts.

We win together and fail together. We own outcomes as a team. We learn fast. We don’t do blame.

We hustle with humility. Speed matters. So does integrity. We assume best intent and stay grounded in the mission.