Senior Design Engineer - Top of Funnel

Mercury•San Francisco, NY

15h

About The Position

In 1488, a thirteen-year-old named Michelangelo entered the Florence workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio as an apprentice. Ghirlandaio was the most sought-after fresco painter in the city, not because he worked alone, but because he didn’t. His bottega was built around a precise division of attention: Ghirlandaio established the composition, the figures, the light. Trusted collaborators carried the work forward, applying the final glazes, rendering the faces, bringing the surface to life. The paintings you see today in Santa Maria Novella are the product of both. You can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. That was the point. The Top of Funnel team owns the introduction to a company that believes design is how you show people you take them seriously. We’re looking for a Senior Design Engineer who works the way Ghirlandaio’s bottega did: close enough to the creative process to carry it forward, and skilled enough to know the difference between almost right and actually right.

Requirements

Has a portfolio of crafted work that demonstrates both engineering quality and design sensibility.
Has been the technical lead of complex projects with many stakeholders with a track record of success.
Has deep command of HTML and CSS as a creative medium, not just a layout tool. You know what the platform can do and you stay current on what’s new
Is fluent in the web animation stack — from CSS transitions to GSAP to the Web Animations API — and knows which tool fits which problem.
Understands that motion on the web is a performance concern as much as a design one.
Is proficient in React and Next.js, particularly in a content-heavy, pre-rendered marketing context.
Has experience working within and extending a design system, with pragmatic opinions about when to use what’s there vs. when to build something new.
Has worked closely with brand designers or creative directors in previous roles and knows how to navigate strong design opinions.
Cares about performance as an extension of craft: a slow or janky interaction isn’t just a technical problem, it’s a design failure.
Has experience with DatoCMS or a comparable headless CMS.

Responsibilities

Bring design intent to life. Our brand designers work at high velocity, producing considered, high-fidelity layouts. Your job is to carry that work forward, with enough taste to honor the intention and enough craft to make it feel native to the web.
Bring the web platform to the table, not just the design spec. You’ll surface what’s newly possible in browsers, propose enhancements that design didn’t know to ask for, and advocate for approaches that make experiences feel alive rather than translated from a static file.
Implement animation and interaction that earns attention. Product launches, campaign pages, and editorial moments require more than accurate layouts. They require pacing, motion, and detail; you’ll own that layer.
Build and extend the design system. The web site’s design system is both the guardrail and the creative toolbox. You’ll identify when a component needs to stretch to cover a new use case, and build those extensions in a way that fits rather than fights the system.
Work directly with brand designers and marketing as a peer. This isn’t an execution role, it’s a creative partner role. You’ll be in the room during concepting, not just receiving tickets at the end.
Set the quality bar for Mercury’s front door. You’ll have a point of view about what exceptional looks like on the web, and the mandate to advocate for it.