Founding Design Engineer
clera · San Francisco ·
- Work mode
- Onsite
- Employment
- Full time
- Category
- Engineering design
- Experience
- 5+ years
About the Role
Join an early-stage B2B SaaS team building AI-powered software for pricing strategy and sales decisions. As the hands-on design engineering owner, you will bring coherence and polish to the product's frontend and conversational experiences as the team ships quickly with the support of AI coding tools.
What You'll Do
Own and evolve the production design system, including design tokens, component primitives, reusable patterns, and frontend standards.
Translate design intent into clear component abstractions and lint rules that help keep human-written and AI-generated work consistent.
Set the bar for frontend UX and quality, auditing tooling and improving Biome configuration, Playwright end-to-end coverage, and performance.
Define and maintain patterns for React Query, React Hook Form, and Zod so new interfaces are reliable and coherent by default.
Build polished product and conversational interfaces, including streaming responses, generative views, and experiences for constrained UI spaces.
Use AI coding tools in production workflows and improve how they contribute to frontend development.
What We're Looking For
At least 5 years building product interfaces, with a portfolio of shipped features that demonstrates strong visual and interaction quality.
Deep expertise in React, strict TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and component primitives such as shadcn/ui or Radix UI.
Production experience as the primary owner of a design system or component library, with work demonstrated through a public repository, portfolio, or detailed walkthrough.
Experience owning frontend tooling and quality, and translating design direction into tokens, component patterns, and maintainable standards.
A hands-on design or UX engineering background, not a design-only role, plus experience with AI coding tools and conversational or other non-standard interfaces.
Familiarity with animation and state transitions, and with interface patterns for chat, collaboration tools, or command-line experiences, is helpful.
Authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship, and able to work in person five days per week in San Francisco.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: $180,000 to $220,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, California, United States. This role requires in-person work five days per week.