Senior Design Engineer (Remote, US)

The role:

As a Senior Design Engineer, you will work at the intersection of design and engineering, splitting your time roughly 50/50 between UI/UX design and hands-on front-end implementation (flexible toward 60/40 engineering and beyond for the right person). You will own both the design experience and its technical realization for the products that empower our content creators to develop the content teachers and students use, with a focus on building a product that improves every day.

Why you’ll love this role:

• Understand and articulate user and business problems, engaging with users frequently to surface pain points and support day-to-day improvements, then propose thoughtful, feasible design solutions.
• Translate design intent (your own and other designers’) into high-quality, accessible, production-ready front-end code that faithfully matches the design vision.
• Develop deep fluency in our engineering ecosystem (architecture, component libraries, APIs, build tooling, and constraints) and use it to unblock designers and bridge design and engineering.
• Establish and maintain a design system as living code, keeping our design sources of truth accurate and up to date, and managing the component library and its documentation in Storybook.
• Build and maintain a shared repository of design principles the team consistently follows, so quality and consistency scale across people and products.
• Prototype complex interactions, states, and motion to validate ideas quickly and communicate intent precisely.
• Reporting to the Product Design Manager, partner closely with Design, Engineering, UX Research, Data, Content, and Marketing to align on problems, define solutions, and ensure feasibility.

Why you’re a great fit:

• 6+ years spanning product/UX design and front-end engineering, with genuine depth in both rather than one: expert-level Figma, and proficiency writing production front-end code (e.g., React, TypeScript, modern HTML/CSS) within an existing codebase.
• Backend or full-stack experience is welcome and a strong plus; the role can flex toward engineering for candidates who lean that way.
• A proven track record of taking designs from concept through to shipped, pixel-accurate, accessible code, and of helping other designers get their work implemented faithfully.
• Strong understanding of web and mobile-web platform technologies; you know when to use broad-stroke sketches, lean on the design system, or apply pixel-perfect attention to detail.
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining design systems as code (including Storybook), and incorporating accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) into both specs and shipped code.
• You leverage quantitative and qualitative research on user pain points and goals to inform your design direction and document decisions and specifications clearly.
• You give and receive actionable feedback with a collaborative mindset, partnering cross-functionally (Product, Engineering, UX Research, Data, Content, Marketing) at all stages of the product life cycle.
•  You actively leverage AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, v0, and AI features within Figma) to expedite exploration, accelerate craft, and pressure-test ideas, as a force multiplier for design judgment rather than a replacement for it.
• You bring a “try anything once” attitude, unintimidated by unfamiliar tools, techniques, or problem spaces and eager to experiment, learn quickly, and iterate.
• While not required, knowledge of Motion Design or animation using Rive would be a plus.

All offers of employment are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check as part of our pre-employment process.

Why you’ll love working at Newsela:

• Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical benefits with employer contribution to premiums and to HSA accounts. Additional benefits such as gym reimbursement, pet insurance, free access to the Calm app, Rocket Lawyer and more to help you stay healthy: mind, body, and soul. 
• Work From Home: We are a fully remote company. We provide a monthly tech stipend to support your WFH needs!
• Supporting ALL Families: Inclusive benefits to support you and your family, including parental leave, fertility support, adoption, and more! 
• Financial Wellbeing: Invest in your future with our 401(k) plan, which includes a employer match to help you build long-term financial security.
• Time Off: Flexible PTO, paid sick time off, company holidays plus winter break (Dec 24th - Jan 1st).
• Professional Development: Newsela offers an annual learning and development allowance to employees to attend external training sessions, classes, workshops, conferences, and educational materials to foster professional growth within their current role and career aspirations at Newsela.
• Make A Difference: No matter your role or department, the work you do each day helps share the future of education and improves the lives of students and teachers.

Newsela is a leading education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. We deliver integrated, AI-powered solutions designed to unlock student engagement, empower teachers, and drive meaningful learning outcomes. Our suite of products supports knowledge and skill development, writing practice, daily instruction, assessment, and data-informed decision-making across K–12 classrooms. Grounded in learning science research, Newsela’s solutions integrate content, assessment, and analytics to help educators track progress, understand student outcomes, and deliver high-impact instruction that supports every learner.

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