Design Engineer - $88.94 - $110.58 per hour

About the Role

This opportunity is for a hands-on Design Engineer who can connect design intent with polished, production-ready user experiences. The role is focused on building systems, writing high-quality frontend code, improving UI craft, and helping design and engineering teams move faster with better tools, workflows, and reusable components.

This role sits within the Design function and is intended for someone who cares deeply about UI quality, interaction details, design system integrity, and the real experience that reaches users. The position requires strong ownership, strong technical judgment, and the ability to improve both the product interface and the way teams build it.

What You’ll Do

Own and improve the design system across both Figma and production code.
Build, maintain, and refine React components, design tokens, UI patterns, and reusable frontend systems used by engineering teams.
Keep the Figma design system aligned with what is actually shipped in production.
Make system-level design updates in Figma as the product and component library evolve.
Partner with product designers to evolve the design system over time.
Reduce the gap between design specifications and production implementation.
Raise UI quality across the product, including transitions, micro-interactions, responsive behavior, loading states, edge cases, and accessibility.
Build internal tooling, documentation, prototyping workflows, and development improvements that help design and engineering teams work more efficiently.
Ship production-ready frontend code for design system components, product UI improvements, and internal tools.
Collaborate closely with product designers in a non-handoff model, helping turn experience strategy into high-quality shipped interfaces.
Work directly with frontend and full-stack engineers to establish reusable patterns and components.
Review UI implementations and help define what “done” should look like in the codebase.
Identify slow, broken, or inefficient team workflows and redesign them when needed.
Prototype, test, and champion better ways to build and ship product experiences.

Qualifications

6+ years of experience building production-ready frontend code in complex, component-driven applications.
Deep expertise with TypeScript, React, and modern CSS.
Experience working with Tailwind CSS.
Strong judgment around component architecture, performance, maintainability, and scalable frontend systems.
A portfolio or body of work that demonstrates both technical depth and strong design sensibility.
Proven experience building and maintaining design systems in production, not only in Figma.
Comfort working in Figma, especially with design systems and system-level decisions.
Familiarity with tools such as Base UI, Storybook, and Figma Code Connect is a plus.
Exposure to microfrontend architectures, Vite, and composition APIs is a bonus.
Experience building internal tools, developer experience improvements, or workflow automation that helped teams become more effective.
Daily working fluency with AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or similar tools.
Familiarity with MCPs and how tools such as Figma, Figma Console, and Notion connect into AI-assisted workflows.
Interest in experimenting with new AI tools, testing their limits, and sharing useful learnings with the team.

How You’ll Work

Work as a creative technical partner, not simply as an implementer of finished mockups.
Pair early with designers to explore feasibility and improve the final user experience.
Take broad product or design direction and translate it into polished, production-quality UI.
Collaborate with engineers to create patterns and components that make future product work easier and more consistent.
Lead through craft, systems thinking, technical quality, and influence as a hands-on individual contributor.

What This Role Is Not

This is not a full-time Figma-only role; the primary workspace is the codebase.
This is not a frontend engineering role based only on receiving redlined mockups.
This is not a people management role on day one.
This role does not require managing a team immediately, but it does require leadership through quality, systems, and collaboration.

Mindset

You look for leverage points instead of only building what is directly requested.
You prefer reusable systems over one-off solutions.
You see process, tooling, and workflow as design problems that can be improved.
You care about quality and polish while still shipping practical work.
You can mentor engineers on UI craft while also taking direction from product designers on user problems.
You work with high ownership, strong judgment, and low ego.
Show more Show less