Design Engineer

The Opportunity

At Certa, we are building the AI-native Operating System for global enterprise relationships. We have the clients (Fortune 100/500) and the robust backend technology. Now, under the guidance of our new Head of Design, we are elevating our experience to match the best consumer products in the world.

We are looking for our First Design Engineer. You are the missing link between our pragmatic engineering requirements and our ambitious design vision. You won't just implement tickets; you will define how our product feels.

The Role

This is not a standard Frontend Engineer role, nor is it a Product Designer role. This role is equal parts

• Craft-focused Frontend Engineering: You write production-grade code, but you obsess over the details that others miss.
• Systems Thinking: You don't just build components; you build the architecture (Design System) that allows the rest of the team to build beautiful UI faster.
• Figma-to-Code Mastery: You bridge the gap between static Figma files and dynamic browser realities, moving fluidly between design and implementation

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What You Will Do

1. Architect the Design System & UI Patterns

Take ownership of our internal design system. You will treat it as an internal product, creating a type-safe, accessible, and composable library in React & TypeScript.

Manage the tokens, components, patterns, documentation, and governance required to scale design across a remote engineering team.

Bridge the gap between Figma Variables/Tokens and code, ensuring a single source of truth for our visual language

2. Make AI-Native UX Feel Trustworthy & Human

Implement interaction patterns specifically for AI workflows: streaming states, progressive disclosure, and optimistic UI

Build for explainability and human-in-the-loop controls, ensuring users trust the system even when it automates complex tasks

Make complexity feel simpleespecially when the system is performing sophisticated smart operations in the background.

3.Maximize Output with AI-Assisted Tooling

Hyper-automate the mundane: Use AI coding assistants (Cursor, Copilot, etc.) to handle boilerplate and scaffolding, allowing you to spend 80% of your time on the 20% of the feel and craft

Build tooling and guardrails (linting rules, visual checks, component playground workflows) that help the team ship high-fidelity UI consistently

4. Bridge Design & Code (Figma-First)

Live in Figma: You are expected to be as comfortable in Figma as you are in VS Code. You'll tweak layouts, design missing states, and refine prototypes yourself.

Push performance beyond just metrics: focus on rendering, bundle size, perceived speed, and interaction responsiveness.

Raise the bar on accessibility and cross-browser behavior, ensuring the product is usable by everyone.

Must Haves

• Expert Figma Skills: This is a primary requirement. You should be fluent in auto-layout, components, variables, and prototyping. You view Figma as a design environment and a technical spec
• AI-Assisted Workflow: You are a power user of AI tools (Cursor, Copilot, v0, etc.). You know how to leverage AI to move faster without sacrificing the quality of the final output.
• Strong Frontend Foundation: Deep expertise in React + TypeScript with a track record of shipping complex, data-heavy UIs in production.
• Demonstrated UI Craft: A portfolio showing obsession with spacing, typography, interaction detail, and motion. You likely have a Folder of Inspiration from the best apps in the world.
• Design System Experience: Strong experience building and maintaining a design system: tokens, components, patterns, and documentation.
• Accessibility Expertise: You build keyboard-first UX, understand screen reader behavior, and enforce correct ARIA usage by default.
• Modern Tooling: Experience with Vite and modern frontend tooling; comfortable setting up and customizing JS tooling/build systems

Why You (The Craft Factor)

You are inspired by the design-engineering cultures of companies like Linear, Vercel, Family, or Arc (The Browser Company)

• You get annoyed when a modal closes without an exit animation.
• You understand that latency is a UX problem, and you use optimistic UI updates to make the app feel instant.
• You believe enterprise software doesn't have to look like a spreadsheet from 2005it should feel as fluid as the best consumer apps.
• You are an AI-augmented engineer who uses modern tools to do the work of three people while maintaining the taste of an artisan.