Design Engineer (Product UI/UX) - 45116491185

Location: Remote, international
Type: Full-time contractor
Level: Mid to Senior
 

We’re looking for a Design Engineer who can bridge product design and frontend implementation.

This is not a pure designer role and not a generic frontend engineering role.

You will own the process from rough product idea to polished shipped experience:

• turning vague product concepts into clear UX
• making strong visual and interaction decisions
• creating flows, mockups, and UI direction
• implementing those designs directly in code
• refining details until the product feels clean, intuitive, and high quality

This role is for someone with strong product taste who can also ship.

• →Own UX and UI execution across key parts of the product
• →Translate product goals and rough concepts into clear flows, wireframes, and polished interfaces
• →Design directly in Figma or similar tools when useful
• →Work closely with AI-assisted tooling in your workflow
• →Implement production-ready frontend UI yourself
• →Improve existing product surfaces for clarity, usability, speed, and polish
• →Work closely with the founder to turn fast-moving ideas into shipped product
• →Establish and evolve reusable design patterns and UI systems
• →Sweat details like spacing, hierarchy, motion, states, onboarding, empty states, and error handling
• →Balance speed with taste in a startup environment

• Strong product and UX judgment
• Strong visual taste and attention to detail
• Ability to go from concept to shipped UI with minimal hand-holding
• Strong frontend implementation skills
• Comfort working in an early-stage startup with ambiguity and rapid iteration
• Good written and spoken English
• Ability to work independently and make good decisions without excessive process

• Experience designing and shipping customer-facing product experiences
• Strong portfolio showing both design thinking and shipped product work
• Frontend proficiency in modern web stacks such as:
  • React
  • TypeScript / JavaScript
  • HTML/CSS
  • component-based UI systems
• Experience with Figma or equivalent design tools
• Familiarity with AI-assisted code tooling (IDE agents, CLI agents, and/or tool-based agents)
• Strong understanding of interaction design, information hierarchy, and UX patterns
• Ability to create polished, production-ready UI rather than only prototypes

• Experience and comfort with designing and building fluid animations (with libraries like PixiJS, Three.js, etc) and micro-interactions
• Experience as a founding designer, design engineer, or early product hire
• Experience working on consumer products, creator tools, gaming, community products, or live products
• Experience building and maintaining design systems
• Experience improving onboarding, retention, engagement, or monetization surfaces

• Not a pure brand/marketing designer
• Not a pure frontend ticket-taker
• Not a role where someone hands you finished designs and you only code them
• Not a role for someone who only makes pretty screens without strong UX reasoning

We care most about:

• product taste
• UX judgment
• quality of shipped work
• ability to implement directly
• speed and autonomy
• familiarity with AI-assisted tooling

A strong candidate will be able to show examples where they:

• improved a product’s usability or clarity
• made good interaction decisions
• implemented polished UI themselves
• worked effectively in ambiguity