Senior Product Design Engineer

Hi, we're DuckDuckGo, the online protection company and remote-first team of 300+ on a mission to raise the standard of trust online. Founded in 2008 and profitable since 2014, annual revenue now exceeds $100m USD and millions use our browser on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, our search engine, and the latest — Privacy Pro. Our culture of trust, inclusivity, and empowered project management underpins everything we do, where each team member takes full ownership of their projects, from scoping and execution to postmortem. If you're seeking end-to-end ownership of your work — you've come to the right place!

Working on the Design Functional Team, this role is design-first; leveraging your expertise in product design and obsessing over the details to help us maintain a high level of craft across our products, such as Duck.ai, native apps, and search. At DuckDuckGo, Design owns quality end to end, and that's where your engineering skills come in. The unique role you will have leverages your coding skills and engineering knowledge to ensure that the execution of our designs meets our quality bar. You're fluent enough in code to prototype, spec precisely, and partner with engineers as a peer to demonstrate how to interpret our designs and interaction. Your design engineering expertise will close the gap between the design that was intended and the product that actually ships by working directly in the codebase, and with our front-end engineers, to make sure execution clears the bar you set. You'll also be our 2nd Design Engineer at the company, so there are many leadership opportunities to help grow and shape the role and discipline.

As a Senior Design Engineer on the Product Design team you will collaborate with team members at all levels to identify and solve problems across our current product offering, as well as helping to pioneer new solutions as we build out the privacy layer for the Internet. You'll have the opportunity to level up our products through exploring and testing concepts that improve overall experience and increase delight while appealing to a broader audience.

Applying your hands-on design engineering skills, you will autonomously lead highly impactful projects that scale across millions of users. From ideation to execution, you'll assess vague problems, propose high-impact solutions, and execute them against a set of success criteria. You'll have a voice in all product-related design decisions, whether large or small, and an opportunity to work on a team dedicated to our ethical, privacy by design approach. Read more about Design at DuckDuckGo on our blog: https://spreadprivacy.com/ethical-by-design/

1. 7+ years of experience in product design and/or design engineering roles, including 2+ years in senior-level design positions at significant global consumer brands.

2. Ability to communicate visual and interaction recommendations with high-quality mockups, prototypes, and rationale.

3. Comfortable partnering with engineers as a peer, reasoning about your decisions in PR reviews and contributing code where it's the fastest route to the right result.

4. Experience defining requirements and developing tools that help accelerate both design and engineering workflows, and retain both quality and consistency of our design system across design and code.

5. An ability to prototype in code to a production standard, with an understanding of semantic markup and accessibility, leveraging but not relying on AI tooling.

6. Fluency in motion and interaction as implemented behaviour, not just specified intent; easing curves, spring physics, and interruptible transitions that hold up under real conditions.

7. Experience structuring a design system beyond component inventory; token layering, primitive versus semantic naming, and holding parity between design source and code.

8. Proficiency in managing projects of varying complexity, from proposal, through execution and release, all while working transparently and collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders and contributors.

9. Accustomed to applying agentic solutions into everyday project management and design execution workflows to both accelerate and raise the quality of your work.

10. Ability to write creative briefs that clearly define and communicate project goals, rationale, and success metrics with stakeholders.

11. Proficiency in research and experimentation. You can leverage both qualitative and quantitative data in driving decisions forward, and are comfortable instrumenting your own work so measurement isn't a hand-off.

12. Ability to take initiative in generating ideas and carrying them forward with urgency and discretion, while working openly and collaboratively.

Hiring works best when it's a two-way street. Learn how we help you get to know DuckDuckGo, envision your future role here, and find out more about how we hire.

DuckDuckGo provides equal work opportunities to all team members and applicants, and it prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, caste, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by our policies or federal, state, or local laws.

We want to ensure that our hiring process is accessible. If you need reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process because of a medical condition or disability, please send an email to careers@duckduckgo.com to let us know the nature of your request.

1. You’ll be required to attend meetings on camera via video conferencing

2. Expect to travel at least two times a year: once for our all-hands meetup and again for a team retreat (each around 4-5 days). While extenuating circumstances may impact attendance, everyone is strongly encouraged to attend.

3. While we offer a flexible work arrangement with no core hours, expect an average full-time commitment of 40 hours per week.

4. A successful candidate must pass a background check as a condition of joining the team.

5. By applying for this role, you confirm that all information submitted is accurate and complete. You further acknowledge that providing false or fraudulent information during the application process is cause for denial of an offer, revocation of any existing offer, or other adverse action, up to and including termination after the start of your commencement of work.

As part of our commitment to enhancing our recruitment process, we utilize artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist in reviewing and summarizing job applications and test projects, including those tools integrated into our recruitment vendor platforms. We use AI to flag potentially fraudulent applications, analyze and summarize applicants’ experience, interviews, and project performance, and help streamline our selection process.

1. Data Privacy: All information provided in your application will be handled in accordance with our Recruiting Privacy Policy. We ensure that your personal information is protected and used solely for recruitment purposes.

2. Human Oversight and Accountability: The AI technology is designed to support our hiring team by providing insights and summaries of applications and evaluations of test projects against scoring rubrics. All final evaluations and hiring decisions, however, will be made by our hiring team, who will consider the AI's input alongside other factors.

3. Transparency: We believe in transparency regarding our hiring practices. If you have any questions about how AI is used in our recruitment process, please feel free to reach out to us.

By submitting your application, you acknowledge and consent to the use of AI technology in our review process. If you would like to request an alternative selection process, please contact us as at careers@duckduckgo.com. Thank you for your interest in joining DuckDuckGo!