Frontier UX Engineer
Hark
$150,000 - $350,000 / year
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Description
About Hark
Hark is an artificial intelligence company building advanced, personalized intelligence. One that is proactive, multimodal, and capable of interacting with the world through speech, text, vision, and persistent memory.
We're pairing that intelligence with next-generation hardware to create a universal interface between humans and machines. While today's AI largely operates through chat boxes and decade-old devices, Hark is focused on what comes next: agentic systems that interact naturally with people and the real world.
To get there, we're developing multimodal models and next-generation AI hardware together - designed from the ground up as a single, unified interface for a new era of intelligent systems.
About the Role
The Embedded Software team is looking for a Frontier UX Engineer to build the software that turns design intent into interfaces people can pick up and use. You will work closely with Design, taking ideas, use cases, and specifications from early prototype through a world class shipped product, pushing the UI experience to its limit.
Much of the work has no precedent, requiring comfort with unclear requirements and problems that cross design and several software layers. We care a lot about how the product feels to use, and we want someone who shares that mindset.
Responsibilities
- Turn design specifications, use cases, and rough ideas into shipping interfaces, from early prototype through production on real hardware
- Own execution: take a prototype the whole way to something that ships, with the quality bar held at each step
- Find where the design language outruns the platform, and push the UI software at every layer needed to close the distance
- Advise designers on what the system is actually capable of, early enough for it to change the design
- Shape the UI runtime and system architecture with requirements drawn from real designs rather than hypotheticals
- Own the end-to-end development of user experiences alongside design, firmware, and hardware partners
Requirements
- 8+ years of professional UI software development experience
- Direct experience building user interfaces that run on a device, not only cloud-backed mobile apps
- Experience working inside or closely with a design team
- Experience with rapid prototyping, able to build a realistic interactive prototype in days
- Deep runtime knowledge of at least one major UI framework (e.g. UIKit, SwiftUI, Core Animation, Jetpack Compose, Flutter, or a web-based rendering engine)
- Proficient in at least one of: C, C++, Rust, Swift, or Dart, and the ability to trace code across language and process boundaries
- Ability to work with incomplete information in uncharted territory, driving quality and results
Bonus Qualifications
- Direct experience with or exposure to embedded system or operating system work (e.g. system daemons, IPC, HAL, drivers, firmware)
- Experience shipping system-level UI apps on embedded devices
- Experience shipping a system-level UI framework or graphics stack on iOS, Android, Linux and/or VxWorks
- Contributions to open source UI libraries widely adopted by the community
- Experience with design tools (e.g. Figma, Origami, Rive, or Principle) and turning their output into production animations
- Experience building UI design tools (e.g. component libraries, visual or node-graph editors, or interactive prototyping environments)
- Experience building interfaces driven by voice, vision, sensor, or ML models, including generated interfaces
Compensation
The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $150,000 - $350,000 annually.
The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.
About this role
Hark is building the next generation of human-computer interaction through multimodal AI and custom hardware, and this role sits at the intersection of that vision. As a Frontier UX Engineer, you'd own the software layer that translates design intent into tangible, shipped experiences on novel devices—work that requires moving fluidly between design specifications, firmware constraints, and hardware realities. This isn't incremental mobile app work; you'd be solving problems that have no precedent, advising designers on what's actually possible while pushing the UI stack to close gaps between ambition and capability.
The role demands 8+ years of professional UI development with a track record of shipping device-based interfaces, not just cloud-backed apps. You'll need deep runtime knowledge of at least one major UI framework and fluency in a systems language like C++, Rust, or Swift. Equally important is comfort working with incomplete information and the ability to collaborate closely with design, firmware, and hardware teams from prototype through production. Experience with embedded systems, OS-level UI work, or shipping system frameworks is a strong plus, as is familiarity with design tools and the ability to turn their output into production-ready animations.
This is a full-time, in-office position in San Jose with a base salary range of $150,000–$350,000, depending on experience and skills. It's suited for someone who finds the constraints of embedded and hardware-driven UI work energizing rather than limiting, and who cares deeply about how products feel in hand.
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Pay for this role
$150,000 to $350,000 per year
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