Lead Design Engineer (m/f/d)

Why this role, why now

Blockbrain is growing fast, and design is becoming a core driver of how our product wins. As the team scales, we need someone who not only sets the craft bar but builds and leads the people who hold it. This is where design leadership meets hands-on execution.

This is a rare opportunity to shape both the design foundation and the team that grows on it. You lead design engineers across the full product, own the vision and the standards, and still write code where it matters most. You report directly to the engineering leadership, carry real professional and disciplinary responsibility for your team, and shape how design and engineering work together at Blockbrain. Real ownership and room to build from day one.

What we expect

• 8+ years of experience in product design, design engineering, or frontend-heavy design roles, with a strong portfolio that proves your craft, ideally gained in fast-paced startups or scale-ups
• Proven leadership experience with professional and disciplinary responsibility for design or design engineering teams, from hiring and developing people to setting direction and holding the bar
• Craft obsessive: you care about the difference between a good interaction and a great one, and you know how to instill that standard in a whole team
• System-thinker first: you design systems, not screens, so your work is coherent across components, states, edge cases, and error conditions
• Technically fluent: you read and write code, understand what is expensive to implement versus cheap, and never ship designs that are beautiful in Figma and painful in production
• Data-driven and decisive: you ground decisions in real behaviour and metrics, make the call under ambiguity, ship it, and revise when you learn something
• Fluent English, German is a plus

Expected AI Skills

AI is not a buzzword here, it is part of our daily work and a real multiplier.

• Use AI tools to generate design variations, explore interaction concepts, and accelerate visual production, and leverage coding agents to implement and iterate on frontend code without waiting on others
• Work directly with Blockbrain's own agent platform, stay current on how AI reshapes interface paradigms, and feed real design intuitions back into the product

We are not looking for AI experts, but for designers who treat AI as a creative and engineering multiplier, not a novelty.

• Lead the design engineering team with professional and disciplinary responsibility: hire, develop, coach, and bring the right people to top performance
• Own the design vision across the full product, from web and agent UI to mobile, and set the direction the team builds on
• Define and evolve Blockbrain's component library, interaction patterns, spacing, typography, and motion, keeping it consistent across all surfaces
• Stay hands-on: implement components directly in the TypeScript/React codebase and close the gap between design intent and production reality
• Design interfaces for complex agent workflows, configuration surfaces, and human-in-the-loop moments, owning decisions from first sketch through shipped component
• Establish design critique practices across the engineering organisation, define what good looks like, and hold the bar
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership as a peer, shaping product direction and how design and engineering work together as we scale

• Flexible Work Models: Full-time position on-site in Stuttgart or Hamburg (3 days per week) with flexible working hours.
• Benefits: Deutschland-Ticket, Wellpass fitness membership, access to the latest AI tools, and regular company and team off-sites.
• Top Team: International team with exceptional talents.
• High Growth Potential: Steep learning curve in a fast-growing AI startup. A high level of personal responsibility and the freedom to actively shape processes.
• Top Equipment: MacBook, iPhone, headset, and all the tools you need to perform at your best.