Founding Design Engineer

Jinba

$120K — $150K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end product design ownership
  • Experience in building or contributing to design systems
  • Proficient in motion design with a focus on timing and user experience
  • Skilled in React and TypeScript for front-end development
  • Familiar with component libraries like shadcn/ui or Radix
  • Experience designing complex user interfaces for developer or automation tools

Responsibilities

  • Design and build Jinba's design system, focusing on components, tokens, and documentation
  • Own the UI/UX for core product features from concept to implementation
  • Create motion designs to enhance user workflow experiences
  • Write clean, maintainable frontend code utilizing modern design patterns
  • Collaborate directly with engineers to ship features
  • Establish design processes and standards as the founding design hire

Benefits

  • Opportunity to shape the user experience of an AI-native platform
  • Work in a startup environment with an international team
  • Become a core member of an early-stage company with rapid growth potential
  • Influence design processes and standards from the ground up
  • Contribute to innovative solutions for enterprise automation
Full Job Description
About the Role

Design engineer who owns the full visual and interactive experience of Jinba's platform. You'll build our design system from the ground up, create motion that makes complex workflows feel intuitive, and ship production code alongside the engineering team. This is a founding design role for someone who wants to shape how enterprise users interact with AI-native software.

Responsibilities
  • Design and build Jinba's design system: components, tokens, patterns, and documentation
  • Own UI/UX for core product surfaces, from concept through implementation
  • Create motion design that guides users through workflow creation and execution
  • Write clean, maintainable frontend code (we use shadcn/ui and modern React patterns)
  • Collaborate directly with engineering to ship features, not just hand off specs
  • Establish design processes and standards as the first dedicated design hire
Requirements
Design Skills
  • Strong product design sense with portfolio showing end-to-end ownership
  • Experience building or significantly contributing to a design system
  • Motion design ability: you understand timing, easing, and how animation communicates state
Technical Ability
  • Proficient in React/TypeScript; you ship your own designs
  • Familiar with component libraries like shadcn/ui, Radix, or similar
  • Understanding of design tokens, CSS architecture, and scalable frontend patterns
Product Context
  • Experience with developer tools, no-code platforms, or workflow/automation products
  • Comfort designing complex interfaces: canvas editors, drag-and-drop builders, multi-step flows
  • Ability to simplify dense functionality without dumbing it down
Strong Signals
  • Design engineer or founding designer roles at early-stage startups
  • Experience at companies like Figma, Linear, Notion, Retool, Vercel, or similar dev/productivity tools
  • Built a design system from scratch at a growing company
  • Background combining design and engineering
Mindset
  • Generalist: you'd rather own the whole surface than perfect one component forever
  • Opinionated but collaborative: you have strong taste and can articulate why
  • Early-stage ready: you're excited by ambiguity and building foundations others will use


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