Design Engineer, Design Systems

Rootly

27d

About The Position

We're hiring a Design Engineer to build Rootly's design system in production. Our design team has defined an early system in Figma that includes tokens, primitives, icons, complex components, but what's missing is someone who carries those decisions into code with the fidelity they deserve.

This is a foundational role. You'll own the component library end-to-end, shape how every surface in the product gets built, and set a quality bar that compounds over time. You'll partner directly with our Principal Designer and ship work that every engineer and AI agent builds on top of.

Our frontend is Rails-based: ViewComponent, Hotwire, and Tailwind CSS. If you've built component systems in React, the mental model translates.

Requirements

• 4+ years of experience building and owning design systems in production: You've written clean, scalable front-end code, carried design decisions from Figma into shipped components, and know what it takes to build a system that holds up over time.
• An eye that won't let bad UI ship: You see a 2px misalignment or a wrong grey and you open a PR before anyone asks. Craft is ingrained in how you operate.
• A point of view on how products should feel: You have opinions about interaction patterns, component APIs, and what makes an interface feel polished, and you bring those opinions into the room.
• Systems thinking over feature thinking: You instinctively ask how a component scales, how tokens cascade, how a change here affects 40 screens there. You build for the system.
• Figma fluency: You read a design file, understand the intent behind the decisions, and translate it to code without a handoff doc.
• Deep CSS knowledge and experience building component libraries in production: Design tokens, systematic CSS, responsive and accessible patterns. Tailwind experience is a plus.
• Willingness to work in Rails: You don't need to be a Rails engineer, but you do need to be comfortable picking up ViewComponent and Hotwire, and confident that your frontend skills transfer.

Responsibilities

• Build and own the design system in code: Build and maintain the token pipeline and component library, from design tokens through to production components, so the system becomes the single source of truth for every surface in the product.
• Raise the quality bar across the product: You spot where the product experience falls short, propose better patterns, and ship the improvements yourself.
• Close gaps that compound over time: Hardcoded colours, inconsistent type scales, one-off variants. You find them, fix them, and make the system enforce the right patterns going forward. You review frontend PRs and catch what others miss.
• Ship UI with pixel-level fidelity: You never approximate designs. You implement them exactly with the right spacing, transitions, hover states and more. You don't need a designer hovering over your shoulder to get it right.
• Use AI as a real collaborator: Work with Claude Code or Cursor as part of your daily workflow. A clean, consistent component library means AI agents can ship production UI and you're building the foundation that makes that possible.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and early equity in a fast-growing, venture-backed company.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• 3 weeks of vacation, plus unlimited sick and mental health days, and a company-wide end-of-year shutdown to recharge.
• $500 stipend for home office setup.
• A fast-moving, high-impact environment where your leadership and ideas directly shape the future of the company.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed