About the Role:
The Design Engineer is a senior or staff level founding role focused on crafting exceptional user experiences at the intersection of AI, creativity, and software development. This position blends product design, interaction design, and frontend engineering to build intuitive, high performance interfaces for an AI powered code generation platform. The ideal candidate is equally fluent in visual design and implementation, capable of translating ambitious ideas into elegant, responsive, and production ready experiences. This is a high impact, in person role in San Francisco with significant ownership over product direction and interaction standards.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement high quality user interfaces that feel fast, expressive, and intuitive.

• Own interaction design across the product, including micro interactions, animations, and dynamic UI states.

• Translate product concepts into polished, production ready frontend experiences.

• Build reusable design systems and component libraries that scale with the product.

• Collaborate closely with founders and engineers to define user experience, information architecture, and interaction patterns.

• Prototype rapidly to explore new product directions and experimental AI workflows.

• Optimize frontend performance, rendering behavior, and responsiveness across complex UI states.

• Balance aesthetics, usability, and technical feasibility in all design decisions.

• Contribute to product strategy by identifying opportunities to elevate the user experience through thoughtful design and engineering.

Qualifications:

• Significant experience as a Design Engineer, Product Design Engineer, or Frontend Engineer with strong design training.

• Demonstrated portfolio showcasing interaction design, UI craftsmanship, and shipped production software.

• Deep expertise in modern frontend frameworks such as React, Next.js, or similar technologies.

• Strong understanding of the DOM, browser rendering, animations, and performance optimization.

• Experience building and maintaining scalable design systems and component architectures.

• Proven ability to operate at senior or staff level, taking ownership of major product surfaces.

• Strong product intuition and refined visual taste.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience designing AI driven or developer focused tools.

• Background in interaction design, human computer interaction, or visual design.

• Experience working in early stage startups or as a founding team member.

• Passion for pushing creative boundaries in software design and user experience.