Design Engineer

White Circle • New York, NY

17d

About The Position

White Circle is an AI safety company building a safety, reliability, and optimization layer for AI systems. Its platform uses natural-language policies to define what AI models should and should not do, then automatically tests, enforces, and continuously improves those policies at scale. The company has raised $70 million in total funding and processes more than one hundred million API calls monthly. It is a small, focused team working on AI safety and related technical challenges.

The Design Engineer will turn complex AI safety workflows into intuitive interfaces for engineering and research teams. The role spans design and implementation: exploring flows in Figma and building production-ready interfaces with React, TypeScript, and the company’s component library. The engineer will own the connection between design and shipped product, ensuring implementation matches the intended experience down to visual details and transitions.

The role includes owning the design system in Figma and code, prototyping interactions with real data, and improving interface quality, accessibility, and performance. The Design Engineer will work directly with product, engineering, and research teams in a fast-iteration environment with substantial ownership.

Requirements

• At least 6 years of experience in product design, frontend engineering, or design engineering.
• A portfolio demonstrating both design work and shipped code.
• Strong frontend skills, including React, TypeScript, and modern CSS such as Flexbox, Grid, custom properties, and container queries.
• Experience building and maintaining design systems in code, including design tokens, component APIs, and Storybook or similar tools.
• Deep Figma knowledge, including Auto Layout, Components, Variants, Variables, and Prototyping.
• Experience with motion and animation in code, such as Framer Motion / Motion or CSS transitions.
• A track record of designing clear, functional web interfaces; technical or data-heavy products such as dashboards, developer tools, or B2B SaaS are particularly relevant.
• Solid understanding of accessibility, including WCAG, keyboard navigation, and ARIA, as well as responsive design.
• Comfort working in a real codebase, including Git, code review, and collaborating with engineers.
• Daily use of AI tools in the workflow, such as Cursor, Claude Code, or v0, and the ability to get production-quality results from them.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Tailwind CSS, Radix UI / shadcn/ui, or other headless component libraries.
• Experience with Next.js or Vite.
• Experience with data visualization tools such as D3, Recharts, or visx.
• Experience with Figma plugins or Figma-to-code pipelines, such as Tokens Studio, Style Dictionary, or Code Connect.
• Interest in AI safety, LLMs, or developer tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design and build product interfaces end to end, from Figma exploration through production-ready React code.
• Own the design system in Figma and code, including tokens, components, variants, and documentation, and keep both implementations in sync.
• Build and polish UI components, accounting for states, edge cases, accessibility, and performance.
• Prototype interactions and new flows in code to test ideas with real data before committing to them.
• Create motion and micro-interactions that make complex workflows clear and responsive.
• Improve product quality by identifying and fixing UI inconsistencies.
• Work directly with product, engineering, and research teams through fast iterations and take ownership of deliverables.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package, including equity.
• Flexible time off.
• Health insurance.
• Mental health support, including coverage for therapy when needed.
• 401(k) retirement plan.
• Learning and development support for courses, conferences, and opportunities to grow skills.
• Hardware, subscriptions, tools, and services needed for the role.
• Team off-sites twice a year.

What This Job Offers

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