Product Designer, App Foundations

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era. When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done. Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma. We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today. ROLE OVERVIEW The Product Design team at Benchling is committed to building user experiences that support the scientists who are solving the world’s most important problems. Our work has a direct impact on making scientific workflows more efficient while improving the quality of that research—ultimately helping to drive the biotech revolution. App Foundations owns the notebook, document editing, and the compliance and lifecycle workflows that sit at the core of how scientists work in Benchling. We're looking for a senior Product Designer to own design across two teams: Document Canvas, which covers the document editing experience scientists use to write and execute experimental work, and Enterprise Lifecycle, which covers the review, audit, and compliance surfaces built on top of it. This is a broad role with meaningful autonomy. You'll set design direction, work closely with Product on priorities, and be the primary design voice for a set of surfaces that a large portion of Benchling's users interact with daily. That includes contributing to longer-horizon thinking and ideating on where AI can meaningfully improve how scientists write, review, and manage their work. It suits someone who's comfortable holding complexity across multiple product areas and who has strong opinions about what good looks like. An ideal person for this team will be able to balance customer needs and priorities with scalable, consistent, delightful user experiences in an agile environment. RESPONSIBILITIES - Work with Product Management and Engineering teams to define product strategy, scope, and prioritization across Document Canvas and Enterprise Lifecycle - Own the design for high-impact initiatives from research, concepts, wireframing, and mockups through to implementation - Design and prototype multiple ideas quickly to validate product directions - Conduct user research and interviews to inform product direction and improve usability for scientists in regulated environments - Incorporate AI tools into your design workflow to move faster and help define how the team uses AI as a design medium going forward - Drive design strategy for long-horizon projects, balancing incremental improvements with foundational investments - Use and contribute to evolving design systems by collaborating with other Designers to identify gaps and design components that have high utility across the product - Clearly communicate design rationale to cross-functional teams and Product and Design leadership - Effectively communicate in a hybrid environment that balances in-person collaboration and remote work QUALIFICATIONS - 5+ years of experience* driving the design of software products, ideally SaaS, while maintaining