Descript

Lead Design Engineer

San Francisco, CA or Remote, US

Sponsorship not specified$247k-$280kDetected 19 days ago

ReactCSSSparkFigmaDesign SystemsAccessibilityCommunicationCollaboration

About the role

You've probably gone by many titles in your day: designer, engineer, creative technologist - today you may just be calling yourself a product builder.
You'll also be a mentor to designers at various stages of their journey into hybrid ways of working.

Be the primary force behind the codebase with design support in Figma. You'll build, maintain, document, and evolve shared components, tokens, and patterns
Design highly interactive components and translate design specs into production-quality code with precise attention to spacing, color, typography, motion, and interaction behavior
Partner with product designers to close the gap between what's in Figma and what ships. Attend crits. Give feedback. Help them think through edge cases or technical realities
Review designer PRs that touch shared UI surfaces and design system contributions from feature engineers
Maintain and improve design system documentation so engineers and designers can self-serve without pinging you for every variant
Contribute to the evolution our ways of working so everyone can build on vibes while staying true to our system and standards
8+ years building products in some capacity as long both design and engineering are in there somewhere.
Experience building or maintaining a product design system at production scale - tokens, component APIs, versioning, migration paths, documentation
We believe in actively building a team rich in diverse backgrounds, experiences, and opinions to better allow our employees, products, and community to thrive.

Proficiency with CSS modules, CSS custom (var(--semantic-token)), and the discipline to use semantic tokens over primitives

Know what it's like to be a one-of-one and/or first-of-type in your organization
Have worked on design systems for complex products in creative tooling or an analogous space
Know how to make smart use of AI in design system workflows, by creating tools like agent skills, rules and automations for designers and engineers
Have tried your hand at internal tools and resources for designing, prototyping, and bringing specs to life (beyond the design system and documentation itself)
Are at least familiar with headless CMS tools, electron apps, and other technical systems the design system may overlap with

include a generous healthcare package, 401k matching program, catered lunches, and flexible vacation time.
Unblock product squads by giving them components that are flexible enough to use without forking and opinionated enough to enforce consistency
For our hybrid roles, we're flexible, and you're an adult-we don't expect or mandate that you're in the office every day.

A way to help us understand your technical skill and design taste as part of your application. This can be a design portfolio, links to live projects, slide deck, or video walk-through - whatever tells your story!

employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status

This listing is sourced directly from Descript's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.