Founding Design Engineer

About the RoleDesign engineer who owns the full visual and interactive experience of Jinba's platform. You'll build our design system from the ground up, create motion that makes complex workflows feel intuitive, and ship production code alongside the engineering team. This is a founding design role for someone who wants to shape how enterprise users interact with AI-native software.ResponsibilitiesDesign and build Jinba's design system: components, tokens, patterns, and documentationOwn UI/UX for core product surfaces, from concept through implementationCreate motion design that guides users through workflow creation and executionWrite clean, maintainable frontend code (we use shadcn/ui and modern React patterns)Collaborate directly with engineering to ship features, not just hand off specsEstablish design processes and standards as the first dedicated design hireRequirementsDesign SkillsStrong product design sense with portfolio showing end-to-end ownershipExperience building or significantly contributing to a design systemMotion design ability: you understand timing, easing, and how animation communicates stateTechnical AbilityProficient in React/TypeScript; you ship your own designsFamiliar with component libraries like shadcn/ui, Radix, or similarUnderstanding of design tokens, CSS architecture, and scalable frontend patternsProduct ContextExperience with developer tools, no-code platforms, or workflow/automation productsComfort designing complex interfaces: canvas editors, drag-and-drop builders, multi-step flowsAbility to simplify dense functionality without dumbing it downStrong SignalsDesign engineer or founding designer roles at early-stage startupsExperience at companies like Figma, Linear, Notion, Retool, Vercel, or similar dev/productivity toolsBuilt a design system from scratch at a growing companyBackground combining design and engineeringMindsetGeneralist: you'd rather own the whole surface than perfect one component foreverOpinionated but collaborative: you have strong taste and can articulate whyEarly-stage ready: you're excited by ambiguity and building foundations others will useAbout JinbaWe help large enterprises build automated workflows using plain English. Unlike traditional no-code tools that bolt a chat agent onto their interface, Jinba is built as a native vibe coding platform from the ground up.YC W26. International team across SF and Tokyo. Growing fast with major enterprise contracts.

Created: 2026-04-03