Founding Design Engineer

About the Role

This is a founding-level role at a seed-stage B2B SaaS startup in the pricing intelligence space. You will own the entire frontend design system, component library, and UI coherence layer across a product that ships fast with both human engineers and AI coding agents. This role is the sole bar-raiser for frontend quality and UX standards across the company.

What You'll Do

Define and maintain the design token system, component library, and frontend patterns that keep every shipped interface feeling like one cohesive product.

Enforce frontend standards so that agent-written and human-written pull requests land consistently by default, using React Query, React Hook Form, and Zod.

Own frontend tooling and quality, including Biome configuration, Playwright end-to-end coverage, and frontend performance.

Translate design intent into component abstractions and lint rules to preserve coherence at scale.

Build and iterate on conversational and AI-native interface patterns, including streaming responses and generative views.

Integrate AI coding tools into the frontend workflow to accelerate delivery without sacrificing polish.

Contribute to constrained UI surfaces such as chat-based or CLI-style interfaces where applicable.

What We're Looking For

5 or more years building and shipping polished product interfaces, with a strong portfolio demonstrating that quality.

Deep expertise in React, strict TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS, with hands-on experience with component primitives such as shadcn/ui and Radix UI.

Prior ownership of a design system or component library in production, demonstrated through a public repo, portfolio, or detailed walkthrough.

Experience defining and enforcing frontend patterns across a team, including with AI-assisted coding tools such as Claude Code or Cursor.

A hands-on design/UX engineer mindset, not a product designer role.

Familiarity with animation and UI state transitions (e.g., Framer Motion) to enhance perceived speed and polish is a strong plus.

Experience building conversational interfaces or chatbots for B2B users is a plus.

Experience with constrained UI spaces such as Slack Block Kit or Microsoft Teams Adaptive Cards is a plus.

Authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary range: $180,000 to $220,000 USD annually. Equity participation is expected at this founding-team level. No visa sponsorship is available.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, California , five days per week. Candidates must be based in San Francisco or willing and able to relocate.