How to Get a Job as an AI Product Designer

We've reviewed over 300 applications for Google DeepMind as their exclusive recruiting partner. And the pattern that keeps showing up in rejections might surprise you.

Great resumes. Great portfolios. Great experience. Rejected at the profile review phase.

Having all of those things isn't enough anymore. Not for this role. Not for this product.

Here is a clip of me talking about it:

The bar has moved

Google DeepMind is building one of the most important products in the world. The design bar reflects that. They're not looking for someone who can ship clean screens and present a polished case study. They're looking for a different kind of designer entirely.

We've presented eight to ten candidates so far. Three have gotten through to first round interviews. Not second rounds. First rounds. The rest were rejected before they even got a phone call. And these were people with extraordinary resumes and great work. The reason they didn't make it? Nothing moving. No vibe coding experience. Static portfolios, no matter how beautiful, aren't getting through.

What we're seeing get through, and what we're actively coaching candidates toward, comes down to a specific profile: the AI native multi-tool designer.

The three things DeepMind actually wants to see

We got direct feedback from the hiring managers after a candidate made it to the loop. They told us exactly what they're evaluating:

1. Solve tough problems. They don't want mid-level or senior-level problems. They want staff-level problems. Complex, ambiguous, high-stakes design challenges. Preferably showcasing AI in the work, but not required. Lead with the problem that was genuinely difficult, the constraints that made it interesting, and the decisions you made along the way. This team wants to see how you think through ambiguity, not just the final deliverable.

2. Super high-craft work. Even if it's a side project. Even if it's something fun. Show them how creative you can be and demonstrate your visual design ability plus your interaction design ability. This can sit alongside your main case studies. Something animated, something 3D, something that moves and feels interactive and pushes boundaries. The aesthetic bar is extremely high. Craft alone is table stakes, but you absolutely need it alongside everything else.

3. Be a great storyteller. If you can't keep things concise and tell your story without taking forever, you're not going to be a great fit. These are fast-moving teams solving novel problems. You need to demonstrate that you can communicate complex ideas clearly and efficiently. No meandering. No unnecessary preamble. Get to the point and make it compelling.

Demos over decks

Here's something we tell every candidate we coach for these roles: there is a "demos over decks" mentality on this team. They want to touch it. They want to play with it.

"We do not want to see static mock-ups." That's a direct quote from the hiring managers. They want to see things moving. They want to see examples of interaction work. And if possible, they want to interact with it themselves. This does not need to be shipped work. It can be fun side projects, vibe coded things you built on a weekend. They just want evidence that you're not only talking about it, you're doing it.

Think about the practical context. When you're presenting via video call, those looping video presentations tax your GPU and theirs. The screen stutters. The experience is actually terrible. But when you're walking through a live prototype on a hosted site, it's lightweight. It's your voice plus the visual. And they can feel the craft in a way that a Figma recording never communicates.

Our recommendation: for your portfolio website (the thing you send ahead of time), embedded videos work great. But for the live presentation, a working demo you can walk through and click on while talking about your decisions is significantly more effective.

Show your workflow, not just your output

One thing that separates the candidates who get through from those who don't is showing how they work with AI tools, not just what they produced.

We recently saw a candidate nail this. They had an interaction design project with an audio waveform component. They started by throwing the concept into an image generation tool to explore visual directions. The initial ideas were mediocre, but the broad strokes were right. So they took that direction into a different AI design tool for more refined stylistic exploration. Then they moved the code into Cursor and said "help me build this, with this visual direction." Cursor built it. Then they needed it in Framer, so they had Cursor output the code as a framework component they could paste directly in.

At no point did they open Figma.

The output was beautiful and polished. But what made it impressive was the workflow: knowing which tool to use at each stage, how to chain them together, and where the designer's eye comes in during the refinement phase. The polish happened in Cursor, where they were instructing it to adjust easing, proportions, reactivity, thickness. That's where design taste meets technical capability.

You don't need to copy this exact flow. But you should be prepared to talk about yours. Devote a slide to it. Before you get into the work, tell them: here are the tools I'm using, here's how my process is evolving, here's how I chain different tools together to go from concept to working artifact. Even saying "my process changes every week as new tools come out, and I'm constantly adapting" is a strong signal.

What to build if you're starting from scratch

If you need to create something new for your portfolio, think about these roles. Think about what Gemini is missing right now. Think about Google's priorities, especially around multimodal experiences.

If Gemini is becoming the app that holds the keys to all the castles, how do different things play into that experience? Connected apps, first-party integrations, third-party tool ecosystems, multimodal interactions. These are the problems the team is solving. Showing that you can think at that level, even in a self-directed project, is a strong signal.

We're not saying build something for them. But build something representative of the type of interesting experiences happening in this space.

And it doesn't have to take weeks. We've seen candidates rebuild old Figma projects as working prototypes in Cursor in a single evening. If you already have strong work, the gap between "static portfolio" and "interactive portfolio" might be smaller than you think.

The interview process

This team runs a much shorter process than typical Google interviews. No ridiculous bureaucracy. You'll interview with the hiring manager first. If they decide to move forward, you go into an interview loop with a multidisciplinary panel, likely in a single day. Then they make a hiring decision quickly.

The team structure is flat. Two directors sit under senior leadership, and everyone else sits directly under them. This is the most important team in all of Google, and they want the absolute best.

We're hiring for these roles right now

Academy is the exclusive recruiting partner for Google DeepMind's design team. We have multiple open roles across the Gemini product family, including the Gemini App team (iOS and Android) and the Connected Apps team (web and mobile, focused on first-party and third-party integrations into the Gemini experience).

We don't just forward your resume. We coach you. We tell you what we're seeing work, what's getting rejected, and how to position yourself for the best possible chance. We'd rather hold off on presenting you and get you properly prepared than send you in leading with the wrong foot.

If this sounds like you, or like the designer you're becoming, we want to hear from you.

Apply here: academyux.com/careers

Academy UX is a specialized UX/UI design recruiting firm with 20+ years of experience and a vetted network of 5,000+ design practitioners. We partner with companies like Google DeepMind, Grammarly, and Superhuman to place world-class design talent.