Design engineer (UK)

About WRITER

WRITER is where the worlds leading enterprises orchestrate AI-powered work. Our vision is to expand human capacity through superintelligence. And were proving its possible through powerful trustworthy AI that unites IT and business teams together to unlock enterprise-wide transformation. With WRITERs end-to-end platform hundreds of companies like Mars Marriott Uber and Vanguard are building and deploying AI agents that are grounded in their companys data and fueled by WRITERs enterprise-grade LLMs. Valued at $1.9B and backed by industry-leading investors including Premji Invest Radical Ventures and ICONIQ Growth WRITER is rapidly cementing its position as the leader in enterprise generative AI.

Founded in 2020 with office hubs in San Francisco New York City Austin Chicago Seattle and London our team thinks big and moves fast and were looking for smart hardworking builders and scalers to join us on our journey to create a better future of work with AI.

About the role

Design engineers sit at the intersection of design and engineering. As a design engineer at WRITER youll own the Writer Design System (WDS) how its built how its maintained and how both humans and AI agents use it to ship product.

This role matters more now than ever. AI coding agents write more of our production code and they ship whatever they find. A design system thats incomplete or inconsistent doesnt just slow designers down; it gets compounded at scale by every agent that builds against it. Youll make sure WRITERs core UI library is complete and trustworthy enough to build on working closely with the designers PMs and engineers who rely on it every day. Youll help shape the surfaces that define how our product feels to use and help set the standard and process for how the EPD org ships product.

This is a hybrid role based out of our San Francisco Chicago Austin New York City Seattle or London hubs. This role will be reporting to the Director of product design.

We are open to hiring for this role at multiple levels with compensation ranges scaled to match your experience expertise and the scope of the role.

What youll do

• Own the Writer Design System (WDS) as your primary domain agentify and maintain it ensuring its optimized for both humans and AI agents building with it

• Design and build production-quality UI components and features owning surfaces from sketch to ship

• Ship design-led work that wouldnt survive an engineering backlog polish passes micro-interactions and brand moments that make the product feel alive

• Architect new primitives and extend the systems core components shaping its technical direction while keeping documentation examples and libraries in sync across Figma .md skills and Storybook

• Uphold the bar for front-end craft across accessibility motion feel consistency and quality ensuring accessibility is baked into every design system component

• Help shape the design-to-code workflow researching the latest tools and practices to unlock org-wide productivity and democratize workflows across the EPD organization

• Partner with designers PMs and engineering leads to measure WDS adoption close gaps and make sure shipped features meet design system standards

What you need

• 48 years building production frontends with TypeScript and React with a track record of owning a system platform or surface end-to-end rather than individual features

• Solid instincts for animation principles including easing curves choreography anticipation follow-through interruptibility and perceived performance

• Fluency in Figma at expert level auto-layout variants variables and code connect and proficiency with design engineering technologies like framer-motion gsap and lottie for web-based animation

• A demonstrable obsession with craft backed by a portfolio side projects GitHub or production work that includes systems-level work and not just feature work

• Experience driving adoption of a design system or shared platform across an engineering org with a track record of influencing technical or design direction beyond your immediate team

• Experience with AI product surfaces tool-call UIs streaming responses agent state and dynamic UI rendering and comfort navigating ambiguous cross-team problems with good judgment about when to loop others in

• A genuine commitment to WRITERs values of Connect Challenge and Own

Benefits & perks (UK full-time employees):

• Generous PTO plus company holidays

• Comprehensive medical and dental insurance

• Paid parental leave for all parents (16 weeks)

• Fertility and family planning support

• Early-detection cancer testing through Galleri

• Competitive pension scheme and company contribution

• Annual work-life stipends for:

  • Wellness stipend for gym massage/chiropractor personal training etc.

  • Learning and development stipend

• Company-wide off-sites and team off-sites

• Competitive compensation and company stock options

Required Experience:

IC