Design Research Engineer
Taste Labs
Design Research Engineer
Taste Labs
Design taste data for training AI models
About the company
Taste Labs is building the data and infrastructure layer for taste.
Our goal is to end AI slop. To make AI feel right, not just be correct. We raised $18.5M in seed co-led by Amplify and CRV, and most frontier labs are already customers.
AI has nailed objective domains and can generate anything. The hard part left is judgement: what fits, what feels like you, what's actually GREAT. We're turning that into something measurable, starting with design.
We do it on two sides: building the post-training data and RL environments that teach taste to frontier models, and the context and verification tools agents need to produce work that's more creative, more on-brand, more right.
If that problem excites you, you'll like it here!
About the role
This is not a typical design role. At Taste, design is the product. You will help to decode the fuzzy problem of what “great” means in design and have this wisdom feed into interfaces, eval design, and crafting products with our engineering and research teams.
You will spend more of your day in code or with researchers than you will in Figma. If you’re curious, have an absurdly high bar for quality and are AI pilled, this is for you.
Types of questions you’ll be thinking about:
What is creativity? How do we break down components of creativity?
What leads to great and bad visual design? How can this be turned into an eval
What are creative, interesting ways we can collect data
How do we classify design styles?
What is the best interface to collect designer feedback on their reasoning behind why they love or hate a particular design?
What are fundamentals of typography, color, layout, alignment? How do I make this measurable?
How would I develop a framework around what “great design” means?
What is AI slop? How can I spot it?
What we’re looking for:
You have amazing taste. You’ve honed your taste for years, you’re opinionated and have wide references, and you have the ability to separate what’s a personal preference vs. a ground truth
You are deeply curious and think like a researcher
You are AI forward - you tinker with AI tools, you’re in claude code/cursor/codex, you ship design in code
You are great at collaborating with others across design, product, research, engineering, customers
Bonus: you’ve worked in creative technology companies, research labs or did your own personal projects on the subject.
Design taste data for training AI models
Taste Labs builds the data and infrastructure layer that AI systems use to judge subjective quality, starting with design. The company measures, classifies, and codifies aesthetic judgment into data models that systems can train on, then supplies the context, evaluation, and verification tooling that sits on top. It works with frontier labs on post-training to improve taste and design capability, and with app developers, coding agents, and creative-tool companies checking the design work their models produce. Unlike benchmarks that score correctness, it targets the harder question of whether output is good, on-brand, or right for a particular person. The company's goal is to give models reliable judgment by turning taste into training data instead of leaving it to prompt engineering.
Explore more opportunities at Taste Labs