Design Engineer

Celigo

77d•$150,000 - $190,000•Remote

About The Position

Celigo is looking for a Design Engineer to close the gap between design intent and production reality, and to build the systems that make that gap permanently smaller. This is the first Design Engineer seat at Celigo, which means real ownership from day one and the chance to shape what this function becomes as it grows. The role sits within the UX organization and operates as a peer across Product Design, Design Systems, Content Design, and User Research and Insights, with strong collaboration across Engineering and Product Management. This is not a pure front-end engineering role, and it is not a pure UX Product Designer role. It is a craft role that requires depth on both sides of the design and engineering boundary: the eye of a strong UX Designer for visual hierarchy, interaction quality, and usability, and the hands of an engineer who writes production-grade TypeScript and React and goes deep on the UI layer rather than wide across the stack. Above all, this is an enablement role. Your success is measured partly by how much faster and better the whole UX team works, not by your personal output alone. You own results, not a step in the process.

Requirements

Strong command of React (or an equivalent component-based framework), TypeScript, and modern CSS, with depth on the UI layer: precise interaction and state logic, accessible markup, smooth motion, and the last 10% of polish (micro-interactions, loading states, animation timing) that makes an interface feel alive.
Expert-level Figma proficiency, not just inspection and handoff: building and maintaining shared component libraries, working with variables and design tokens, structuring files for team-scale use, and contributing to design reviews as a practitioner peer. You understand how a well-organized Figma library maps to a well-organized codebase.
Design systems expertise grounded in component-driven architecture: you understand atomic design methodology (tokens, primitives, molecules, organisms, templates), make principled decisions about abstraction and composition, think in systems rather than one-off solutions, and know how to build systems that scale without fragmenting.
UX Designer sensibilities: a working understanding of interaction design principles, visual hierarchy, usability heuristics, and information architecture sufficient to recognize when a design decision will create friction, and to articulate why, not just flag it. You do not need to own the design direction, but you need to understand it deeply.
Active, hands-on use of AI coding assistants, AI-powered prototyping tools, and workflow automation, integrated into your daily workflow rather than just experimented with. You could build everything in this system without AI; you use AI because it makes you faster. You can review, explain, and defend every line an agent produces.
Curiosity in practice: demonstrated experimentation with new tools and mediums, or exploratory work that shows you are energized by what you do not yet know.
A clear line from your work to the outcome it serves. You ask why before how, anticipate the second-order effects of a system decision, and choose the option that serves the experience rather than the one that closes the ticket.
An owner's mindset. When you see a gap between design and engineering, you step into it. You find the faster path and take it without being asked, and you measure yourself by whether the team shipped something better, not by how busy you were.
Communication and influence: you articulate design and engineering rationale clearly, teach as naturally as you build, and influence decisions across functions.
Ability to collaborate effectively across UX, Product Management, Engineering, and cross-functional partners.
7+ years building web interfaces with a strong command of React (or equivalent component-based framework), TypeScript, and modern CSS. Depth and quality of experience matter more than years. You write code you are not embarrassed to share.
Working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1 AA) and practical experience implementing them at the component level.
A track record of working alongside design and content teams in a cross-functional setting: familiar with design critique culture, content pairing workflows, and how to give and receive direct design feedback.
A portfolio that demonstrates both design sensibility and code quality: work you designed, work you built, and ideally work where those two things overlap.
Production-quality UI components or component libraries
Design system contributions with documented usage guidelines, in both Figma and code
Figma-side systems work: annotated component libraries, token architecture, or design system governance artifacts
Examples of coded prototypes used to validate interaction decisions
Ability to collaborate effectively across UX, Product Management, Engineering, and other cross-functional partners.
Expert-level experience with design token pipelines, connecting the Figma design system to the codebase through a shared token layer rather than manual translation. You bring established best practices with you.
Expert-level experience building and maintaining a component documentation system such as Storybook, with documentation and usage guidelines that engineers actually adopt.

Nice To Haves

Background in integration platforms, iPaaS, or technically sophisticated B2B products, or a demonstrated ability to design for power users and simplify complex workflows.
Degree in Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Interactive Design, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

Maintain and evolve our production-ready React component library, the code expression of the Celigo design system, so that what gets designed and what users actually experience stop drifting apart.
Prototype complex interactions and animation behaviors in code so the team can decide faster. You ship the smallest working version that settles the question, gather real feedback, then make it better, rather than holding out for a perfect build. Debates become working artifacts.
Build the team's AI-assisted workflows. Set up agent rules and context for the codebase and the Figma libraries, encode your judgment into reusable skills and workflows the whole UX team can run, and stay in charge of what the agent produces. You use AI because it makes you faster, never as a substitute for your thinking.
Enable the whole UX team. Define ways of working, teach and pair with designers and content designers, and treat their velocity as your outcome. Adoption of the workflows, agent rules, and tooling you build is a real measure of success here.
Partner directly with Product Designers, Content Designers, and Product Managers to translate design intent into precise, accessible, performant UI components, advising on implementation cost versus experience impact and raising a flag early when an engineering constraint calls for a different path.
Define and document interaction states and usage guidelines that make it straightforward for engineers to implement designs consistently and at speed.
Share ownership of the Figma component library alongside the coded one, maintaining token architecture, component variants, interaction states, and usage annotations so the Figma system and the React system stay structurally in sync. Apply atomic design principles (tokens, primitives, molecules, organisms, templates) to decide where a pattern belongs in the hierarchy.
Review front-end pull requests for design fidelity and WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, serving as a quality checkpoint. You will see your impact in design QA reviews, in fewer post-launch revision cycles, and in how readily engineering teams reach for the component library.
Notice recurring friction between design and engineering and go after the cause, whether the answer is better tooling, clearer specs, or a new component convention. You do not wait for that work to be assigned to you.
Participate in design and content workflows as a practitioner peer: contribute to design critiques, review work in Figma before handoff, flag interaction design issues early, and pair with Content Designers on microcopy inside component states and error flows.