Founding Design Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE

This is a founding-level frontend role at a seed-stage B2B SaaS startup building an AI-native pricing intelligence platform. You'll own the entire frontend design system — tokens, component library, and interface patterns — ensuring everything shipped, whether by humans or AI coding agents, feels like one cohesive product. As the sole bar-raiser for frontend UX, your work directly shapes how enterprise customers experience pricing strategy and deal intelligence.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Define and maintain the design token system, shadcn/ui-based component library, and Tailwind conventions across the full product suite.
• Enforce consistent frontend patterns using React Query, React Hook Form, and Zod so that agent-generated PRs land coherently by default.
• Audit and own frontend tooling and quality, including Biome configuration, Playwright E2E coverage, and frontend performance.
• Integrate brand guidelines and WCAG accessibility rules directly into the codebase and lint rules.
• Translate design intent into component abstractions and tooling guardrails that scale as the team and AI agents ship more UI.
• Work with AI coding tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) as a first-class part of your daily workflow and help the team integrate them into frontend processes.
• Shape conversational and streaming UI patterns for the platform's AI-native interfaces.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 5+ years building polished, production product interfaces with a strong portfolio of shipped features.
• Proven primary ownership of a design system or component library in production (public repo or detailed walkthrough required).
• Deep expertise in React, strict TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and component primitives such as shadcn/ui and Radix UI.
• Hands-on experience with AI coding tools in production workflows.
• Comfort being the sole frontend UX standard-setter across a fast-moving, small team.
• Nice to have: Experience with non-standard AI interfaces (streaming responses, generative views), conversational/chatbot UIs for B2B users, animation libraries like Framer Motion, or constrained UI environments such as Slack Block Kit or Teams Adaptive Cards.
• Must be authorized to work in the US — visa sponsorship is not available.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

Base salary: $180,000 – $220,000 USD annually. Equity participation expected at the founding team level. No visa sponsorship available.

LOCATION

On-site in San Francisco, CA. This is not a remote role.