Staff Design Engineer

SF Compute

$130K — $180K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Strong design instincts combined with coding ability
  • Expertise in modern JS frameworks: React, Vue, Svelte, or SolidJS
  • Proven experience shipping complex frontend components
  • Ability to operate autonomously with limited direction
  • Deep understanding of product quality and user experience

Responsibilities

  • Design and build high-fidelity, polished interfaces
  • Elevate frontend craft, interaction design, and visual detail
  • Collaborate with product and engineering teams to create delightful experiences
  • Make architectural decisions for scalable frontend systems
  • Mentor junior engineers on design sensibility

Benefits

  • Generous equity grant
  • Visa sponsorship available
  • 401(k) retirement plan matching up to 4%
  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents
  • Unlimited paid time off and 10+ observed holidays
  • Paid parental leave for biological, adoptive, and foster parents
  • Daily lunch provided for employees
  • Unlimited office book budget for purchasing books
Full Job Description
About The Role

We're looking to hire an engineer to build extremely high-fidelity, high-taste interfaces. Maybe you were a designer in a past life, but now write code. You'll raise the bar for visual and interaction quality across our product surfaces, working closely with engineering, product, and design partners. We care about people who can operate autonomously: understanding the business context well enough to make good tradeoffs without heavy direction, and growing into broader product ownership over time.

What You Will Do
  • Design and build the high-fidelity, polished interfaces in our product
  • Raise the bar for frontend craft, interaction design, motion, visual detail, performance under real usage
  • Partner closely with product and engineering to turn rough ideas into shippable, delightful experiences
  • Make sound architectural decisions for frontend systems that scale with the product
  • Mentor other engineers on design sensibility and frontend craft
  • Grow into broader product ownership, understanding customer needs, business context, and shipping end-to-end

Who You Are
  • You have strong design instincts, but prefer to build rather than only spec
  • You have strong opinions about product quality and can point to specific things you'd fix in products you use every day
  • You've shipped genuinely complex frontend components - whether the complexity was technical (performance, real-time data, animation) or experiential (making something hard feel simple)
  • You're energized by both the craft of building and by understanding why something matters to the business and its customers
  • Deep expertise in a modern JS framework: React, Vue, Svelte, or SolidJS
  • A track record of shipping interfaces with real visual and interaction craft - not just functional, but genuinely good
  • Staff+ level ability to operate autonomously and make good judgment calls with limited direction

Nice To Have
  • Experience shipping products end-to-end to external customers, and understanding how that work mapped to business goals
  • Startup or early-stage experience, where you had to wear a product-thinking hat as well as an engineering one
  • Experience in developer tools, infrastructure, or technically dense product spaces
Benefits

Generous equity grant

Team members are offered a competitive salary along with equity in the company

Visa Sponsorships

Yes, we sponsor visas and work permits

Retirement matching

We match 401(k) plans up to 4%

Medical, dental & vision

We offer competitive medical, dental, vision insurance for employees and dependents and cover 100% of premiums

Time off

We offer unlimited paid time off as well as 10+ observed holidays

Parental leave

We offer biological, adoptive, and foster parents paid time off to spend quality time with family

Daily lunch

We cover lunch daily for employees

Unlimited office book budget

You can buy as many books for the office as you want

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