Movie Studio Lot PWA Product Designer

PRODUCT DESIGNER — AI DESIGN SYSTEMS & MCP INTEGRATION

Figma + Cursor + Claude | INTERDEPENDENT

About INTERDEPENDENT

We’re building a new kind of Hollywood studio — from scratch.

INTERDEPENDENT is a vertically integrated film studio and venture platform where screenwriters, directors, actors, and audiences all have skin in the game. Every film we make is structured so that the people who create it and the people who believe in it share in its success. No “net profit” Hollywood accounting. No black-box decision-making. Open books, real equity, first-dollar participation.

The product is how all of it comes to life. We’re building a Progressive Web App that spans the entire journey from script to screen:

• THE LOT (interdependent.studio) — The front door. A cinematic landing experience that pulls you into the world of the studio. Think less “SaaS dashboard” and more “you just walked onto a studio lot.”
• MAILROOM — Where screenplays arrive, get evaluated by AI readers, and surface to human audiences. Screenplay discovery designed to make reading feel inevitable — swipeable, immersive, addictive.
• READER — A dedicated screenplay reading experience built to rival the best reading apps in the world. Telemetry-enabled so we know exactly where attention holds and where it drops.
• TV (interdependent.tv) — A streaming interface with a TV guide, live event blocks, and pause-to-shop commerce. You’re watching a scene, you pause, you buy the jacket the lead is wearing. That’s a real feature.
• BACKSTAGE — The operations hub. Open-book financials, production management, governance. Every dollar that moves through a production is visible to every participant in real time.

The brand identity is bold and intentional: a red FYC (“For Your Consideration”) cover page as the signature visual element, Eurostile Next Pro as the primary typeface, and a design language that treats every screen like a frame in a film. This is not a tech product that happens to serve Hollywood. This is a Hollywood studio that happens to be built as a product.

The Role

We need a designer who can own the visual identity of this platform and build the system that makes it real.

Right now, we have designs spread across Sketch files and Figma. We have a comprehensive product spec — 135 functional requirements, 8 user personas, 4 complete user journeys. We have an AI agent framework (BMAD) running in Cursor that builds the actual application. What we’re missing is the connective tissue: a single, beautifully structured Figma design system that the AI agents can consume directly to produce production-quality screens.

This is the frontier of how products get built. You design in Figma. An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server bridges your Figma files directly into Cursor, where AI coding agents read your components, tokens, and layout specs — and build the UI from them. No handoff deck. No redline document. No “the dev didn’t match the mockup.” Your design system IS the source code.

The quality of what you build in Figma directly determines the quality of the product that ships. If your components are tight, your tokens are clean, and your structure is logical — the AI builds gorgeous screens. If the design system is messy, the product looks like every other AI-generated app. We refuse to look like that.

Your Toolkit

You’ll work at the intersection of five tools that represent the cutting edge of AI-assisted design. You don’t need to know them all today — but if this list excites you, you’re the right person:

• Figma + MCP — The anchor. Your Figma files become the single source of truth for the entire product. The Figma MCP server streams your components, tokens, and layouts directly to AI agents in Cursor. This is the bridge between what you design and what gets built.
• 21st.dev (Magic MCP) — A YC-backed tool that generates production-grade React components from a text description. Instead of hallucinating code, it pulls from a curated library of pre-tested components built by real designers. You describe what you want, it gives you something you’d actually ship.
• Google Stitch — Google’s AI design tool that turns text prompts and rough sketches into high-fidelity UI, exportable as React or Tailwind. Its MCP server connects directly to Cursor, so generated screens flow straight into the codebase. Incredible for rapid exploration across a multi-surface app like ours.
• Frontend Design (Anthropic’s Official Skill) — A plugin from the makers of Claude that gives the AI a “real design brain” — creative constraints, production-grade patterns, and aesthetic judgment that prevent the flat, generic look you see in most AI-built interfaces. This is what makes our product look human-designed.
• UI UX Pro Max — A design intelligence database — 57 UI styles, 95 industry-specific color palettes, 56 curated font pairings, 98 UX guidelines — that plugs directly into Claude Code. When the AI builds a screen, this feeds it real design decisions instead of defaults. It’s the taste layer underneath everything.

What You’ll Do

• Audit our existing Sketch and Figma files and consolidate them into one canonical Figma design system — components, tokens, variables — structured for MCP consumption
• Establish Figma as the single source of design truth across all five product surfaces
• Set up and maintain the Figma MCP server so AI agents in Cursor can pull directly from your files
• Design screens and interactions for user stories as they move through the development pipeline
• Evaluate which of the five AI-design tools handles which part of the workflow, and build a coherent pipeline from design to shipped product
• Maintain a DESIGN.md — a living design system document that AI agents reference during every build
• Guard the visual identity: Eurostile Next Pro, the red FYC cover, cinema-grade quality in every interaction
• Work directly with the founder to test, refine, and validate every screen the AI produces against your design intent

Why This Isn’t a Normal Design Job

There is no engineering team waiting for your Figma link. There is no sprint planning meeting where a PM translates your mockups into tickets. Your design system is consumed directly by AI agents that build the product. You are the architect. The AI is the construction crew. The precision and taste you bring to Figma is what separates a cinema-quality platform from another forgettable SaaS app.

This is the emerging discipline of AI-native design — where designers don’t just create mockups but build the systems that AI uses to build products. It barely exists as a job category yet. You’d be one of the early people defining what it means.

Career Path

• During school: Part-time (10–20 hrs/wk), flexible around your schedule. Real design work from day one — not coffee runs and mood boards.
• Summer: Full-time. Own the design system. Ship screens that real users interact with. Build the design-to-code pipeline.
• After graduation: Full-time Head of Design / Design Engineer. Equity in the platform. You’d be designing a studio, not just a product.

Qualifications

Required:

• Currently enrolled at an LA-area school in design, design media arts, film/TV, computer science, or a related field
• Strong Figma skills — components, auto-layout, design tokens, variables, team libraries
• A portfolio that shows real visual taste and UI/UX thinking (not templates, not Dribbble-bait)
• Curiosity about AI-assisted design — you don’t need to be an expert, but you should want to be
• Self-directed, direct, fast. This is a startup — you’ll get feedback straight from the founder and iterate in real time

Preferred (not required):

• Experience with any of the five tools listed above
• Familiarity with Cursor, Claude Code, or any AI coding environment
• Experience migrating designs from Sketch to Figma
• Understanding of design tokens and component architecture (not just visual mockups)
• Interest in film, entertainment, or media — you should care about what we’re making, not just how it looks
• Enough React/Tailwind awareness to understand how components get consumed (you don’t need to code)

The Working Environment

Small team. Early stage. You work directly with the founder (and our UX AI agent Sally) at a beautiful a16z Santa Monica office in person  — no layers, no committees, no design-by-consensus. Your work ships to real users. The pace is startup-fast, the visual bar is film-industry-high, and the tools are genuinely next-generation. We work remotely using Figma, Cursor, Claude, and standard communication tools. You’ll be onboarded to the full product spec, the BMAD agent framework, and the design-to-code pipeline.

Equal Opportunity

INTERDEPENDENT is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.

How to Apply

Submit through Handshake with your resume, a cover letter (tell us which of the five tools excites you most and why — a paragraph is fine), and a link to your portfolio. If you have Figma community files, MCP experiments, AI-generated design work, or anything that shows you think about design systems rather than just screens — include it.

We review on a rolling basis and respond to every applicant.