Design Engineer

Description

The company has built a way to connect to consumer financial accounts that combines real-time liability connectivity with instant payment execution. Its developer-first API lets people link their accounts to the apps and services they choose.

The platform has helped 45+ million users connect 350+ million liability accounts without credentials and has processed over $2.5B in payments, helping users save millions in interest. 1 in 3 credit cards in the United States sits within its ecosystem. Financial institutions including SoFi, Bilt, Cleo, Sezzle, Figure and Aven rely on its APIs.

The team has 50+ people in offices in Austin, San Francisco, New York City and Washington D.C. Investors and advisors include Andreessen Horowitz, Emergence Capital, Y Combinator, Avra and Ardent.

This is the company's first Design Engineer role. The work is mostly coding, with a sharp eye for product, visual and motion design. You will pair with the Head of Design across the website, design system, demos and product, setting the aesthetic direction, making the technical decisions and shipping the work.

The company wants its products to feel precise, technically credible and worth looking at, so its visual identity should reflect its developer-first focus.

The visual and interactive layer is being rebuilt from scratch: a token system for color (built on perceptual color science), typography and spacing; a new design system; a new marketing site; a dashboard with generative UI and charts; and the embedded experience that partners show their own users. Because that embedded product sits inside partner apps, it must adapt to each partner's brand automatically.

You will work with engineers and the Head of Design to raise frontend craft to a level the current team cannot fully own, and you will shape a large open space that customers and end users see. Open source plays a part in the job, with the goal of building work worth sharing that earns respect among designers and creative coders.

Responsibilities

• Own the visual and interactive quality of the design system, covering component states, motion and consistency across every surface.
• Create shader-driven experiences on the website using Three.js and WebGL, including hero sections, ambient motion and branded interactive moments.
• Rework the dashboard well beyond a reskin, with considered transitions, polished data visualization and JSON-driven generative UI components.
• Design and build a component library that can assemble UI on the fly from structured data, such as charts, layouts and elements.
• Decide when a piece deserves bespoke work and when existing tooling is enough, and explain those tradeoffs clearly.
• Cut reliance on contractors for production design and frontend UI work.
• Work with engineers and the Head of Design on direction, and later help scope and hire adjacent design talent as the team grows.

Requirements

• You have shipped interactive web work that used shaders, with Three.js, WebGL or GLSL, and your portfolio shows it.
• You understand the stack from GPU rendering to React component architecture, and you know why this must run in the browser rather than as a video.
• You have strong aesthetic opinions and the technical range to act on them without a designer supplying comps.
• You have built production design systems and component libraries that other people use.
• You work well as an individual contributor and default to building.
• You have worked at or contributed to places with real design craft, such as design studios, developer tooling companies, creative agencies or strong independent dev work.
• You are comfortable being the only person in this specialty for a while and can make progress without much structure.
• Depth and quality of experience count more than years. Apply even if you have never held the Design Engineer title.
• Extra awesome: background in creative coding, gaming or CGI, with an understanding of shaders from several angles.
• Extra awesome: open source contributions to Three.js, shader communities or creative coding libraries.
• Extra awesome: experience with motion design tools such as Rive, Framer or Lottie, and a view on when to use them versus building your own.
• Extra awesome: experience at companies or studios known for frontend craft.
• Extra awesome: familiarity with generative UI patterns and JSON-driven component rendering.

Conditions

The annual US base salary range is $150,000-$200,000.

Work is in person at one of the hubs in New York City, Austin, San Francisco or Washington D.C., with an average of at least 2-3 days per week in the office.

Occasional remote days are allowed, but full-time remote work is not an option.

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision coverage, with basic medical plans 100% covered.
• Flexible PTO.
• $30/day lunch allowance on office days.
• 12 weeks of parental leave.
• Employer-sponsored commuter benefits.
• Phone and internet stipend.
• Work-from-home stipend.
• Contribution toward student loan repayment.
• Lifestyle spending stipend.
• Learning and development stipend.
• Hybrid office stocked with snacks.
• Quarterly team off-sites.