Design Engineer

Nubank•Palo Alto, CA

19d

About The Position

Nu is hiring its first engineer in the Design Center of Excellence (CoE), which supports Nubank’s approximately 260-person design and research function. The CoE has design operations and research operations but no engineer to build the systems it identifies as needed. This engineer will architect and build the systems that help design at Nubank scale, working directly with the designers and researchers who use them and owning work from scoping through implementation. The first priority is NuBrain, a global knowledge system that consolidates more than 30 local repositories. The role will design its context architecture, including how information is retrieved, how token consumption is managed, and how content reaches people and agents when useful. Other work includes creating a platform to measure design quality, assessing and standardizing or retiring roughly 100 locally built AI solutions, and deciding which technical form best addresses each need, such as a plugin, MCP server, agent, Claude skill, or platform. This is an engineering-first role focused on internal systems and tooling for the design function. The engineer will own the CoE tooling roadmap and make technical trade-offs clear to a design organization. The role is not a designer-who-codes position, a generalist backend or infrastructure role, customer-facing mobile product work, or a research or modeling role.

Requirements

Deep engineering experience building systems that other people build on.
A track record architecting UX systems, such as design systems, component platforms, UI frameworks, or front-end infrastructure used by multiple teams.
Demonstrated passion for design through work, including using AI to build compelling examples and more sophisticated systems.
Ability to lead projects, navigate stakeholders, and drive work across an organization without relying on direct reporting authority or another person to run the project.
Evidence of shipped work, such as GitHub projects, live tools, demos, or systems that can be discussed.
Engineering experience is central; the role is not for a designer who codes.
UX systems experience is core; this is not a generalist backend or infrastructure position.

Nice To Haves

Experience building agents, tooling, or infrastructure that helps designers work more quickly and effectively.
Experience as a design systems or UI platform engineer at a design-led product company.
Experience working as an engineer at a design tooling company.
Experience building AI and agentic tools for designers in a day job, open source, or public work.
Experience as a founder or technical lead who was the engineer behind a design-led product.

Responsibilities

Architect and build the systems that design at Nubank runs on, increasingly including agentic systems.
Work with designers and researchers to understand the needs underlying requests and turn them into scoped, buildable solutions.
Set up or reuse infrastructure, write code, and ship systems to the design and research function.
Instrument built systems and deliver metrics and observability.
Own the roadmap for CoE tooling, including prioritizing and sequencing work, declining requests when appropriate, and maintaining momentum without a project manager.
Serve as the technical voice in a design organization and make trade-offs understandable to people who do not read code.
Build NuBrain, a global knowledge system consolidating local design and research repositories, with attention to retrieval, token consumption, and timely delivery of content to people and agents.
Develop a system that scores user experience flows against established design quality parameters.
Assess locally built AI solutions, determine which should become function-wide standards, and retire redundant solutions.
Determine and defend the appropriate technical form for each solution, such as a plugin, MCP server, agent, Claude skill, or platform.