Design Engineer

Nubank•Palo Alto, CA

17d

About The Position

Nu is hiring its first engineer for the Design Center of Excellence (CoE), which supports a design and research function of roughly 260 people. The engineer will architect and build systems that help design at Nubank scale, working directly with the designers and researchers who use them and owning both the scoping and implementation. The first priority is NuBrain, a global knowledge system consolidating more than 30 local repositories. The role will address context architecture, retrieval, token consumption, and delivering useful content to people and agents. Other work includes building a platform to measure design quality, evaluating and standardizing roughly 100 existing locally built AI solutions, and deciding which technical form best fits each need, such as a plugin, MCP server, agent, Claude skill, or platform. This is an engineering-first role for an experienced engineer with a background architecting UX systems, such as design systems, component platforms, UI frameworks, or front-end infrastructure used by many teams. The engineer will own the CoE tooling roadmap, build increasingly agentic systems, instrument them with metrics and observability, and lead work across an organization whose stakeholders do not report to them. The position focuses on internal design-function systems and tooling, not customer-facing mobile product work, generalist backend or infrastructure, or research and modeling.

Requirements

Extensive experience as an engineer building systems that other people build on.
A track record architecting UX systems, including design systems, component platforms, UI frameworks, or front-end infrastructure used by multiple teams.
Demonstrated passion for design through engineering work.
Experience using AI to build compelling examples and more sophisticated systems.
Ability to independently drive projects and navigate stakeholders across an organization.
Evidence of shipped work, such as GitHub projects, live tools, demos, or systems that can be discussed.
Strong engineering ability; this is not a designer-who-codes position.
UX systems experience; this is not a generalist backend or infrastructure role.
Ability to communicate technical trade-offs to people who do not read code.

Nice To Haves

Experience building agentic systems, tools, or infrastructure that help designers work more effectively; this is identified as the strongest signal for the role.
Experience building AI and agentic tools for designers in a professional role, open source, or public projects.
Experience at a design-led product company as a design systems or UI platform engineer.
Experience working at a design tooling company.
Experience as the engineer behind a design-led product, such as a founder or technical lead.

Responsibilities

Architect and build the systems that design at Nubank runs on, including increasingly agentic systems.
Work with designers and researchers to understand underlying needs and turn them into scoped, buildable solutions.
Establish or reuse infrastructure, write code, and ship tools to the design and research function.
Instrument systems with metrics and observability as part of delivery.
Own the roadmap for CoE tooling, including prioritizing, sequencing, and making decisions about what not to pursue.
Serve as the technical voice in a design organization and explain trade-offs to non-engineering stakeholders.
Consolidate and architect the NuBrain global knowledge system, including its retrieval and context architecture.
Build a system that measures design quality and produces an index for experiences.
Assess existing locally developed AI solutions, determine which should become standard, and retire duplicated solutions where appropriate.
Determine and defend the appropriate technical form for tools, such as a plugin, MCP server, agent, Claude skill, or platform.
Navigate stakeholders, lead projects, and drive work through an organization without relying on a project manager.