Senior Product Design Engineer

DuckDuckGo

16h•$178,500 - $178,500•Remote

About The Position

DuckDuckGo is seeking a Senior Product Design Engineer to join their remote-first team. This role is design-first, focusing on product design expertise and attention to detail to maintain a high level of craft across products like Duck.ai, native apps, and search. The unique aspect of this role leverages coding skills and engineering knowledge to ensure design execution meets quality standards. The ideal candidate will be fluent enough in code to prototype, spec precisely, and partner with engineers as a peer. This role will close the gap between intended design and shipped product by working directly in the codebase and with front-end engineers. As the second Design Engineer at the company, there are significant leadership opportunities to grow and shape the role and discipline. The Senior Design Engineer will collaborate with team members at all levels to identify and solve problems across current products and pioneer new solutions for the privacy layer of the internet. This role offers the opportunity to level up products by exploring and testing concepts that improve overall experience, increase delight, and appeal to a broader audience. The position involves autonomously leading highly impactful projects that scale across millions of users, from ideation to execution. The candidate will assess vague problems, propose high-impact solutions, and execute them against success criteria. They will have a voice in all product-related design decisions and work on a team dedicated to an ethical, privacy-by-design approach.

Requirements

7+ years of experience in product design and/or design engineering roles.
2+ years in senior-level design positions at significant global consumer brands.
Ability to communicate visual and interaction recommendations with high-quality mockups, prototypes, and rationale.
Comfortable partnering with engineers as a peer, reasoning about decisions in PR reviews and contributing code where it's the fastest route to the right result.
Experience defining requirements and developing tools that help accelerate both design and engineering workflows, and retain both quality and consistency of our design system across design and code.
An ability to prototype in code to a production standard, with an understanding of semantic markup and accessibility, leveraging but not relying on AI tooling.
Fluency in motion and interaction as implemented behaviour, not just specified intent; easing curves, spring physics, and interruptible transitions that hold up under real conditions.
Experience structuring a design system beyond component inventory; token layering, primitive versus semantic naming, and holding parity between design source and code.
Proficiency in managing projects of varying complexity, from proposal, through execution and release, all while working transparently and collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders and contributors.
Accustomed to applying agentic solutions into everyday project management and design execution workflows to both accelerate and raise the quality of your work.
Ability to write creative briefs that clearly define and communicate project goals, rationale, and success metrics with stakeholders.
Proficiency in research and experimentation.
Ability to take initiative in generating ideas and carrying them forward with urgency and discretion, while working openly and collaboratively.
You’ll be required to attend meetings on camera via video conferencing.
Expect to travel at least two times a year: once for our all-hands meetup and again for a team retreat (each around 4-5 days).
A successful candidate must pass a background check as a condition of joining the team.

Nice To Haves

Experience with AI tooling.

Responsibilities

Leverage expertise in product design and obsess over details to maintain a high level of craft across products.
Use coding skills and engineering knowledge to ensure design execution meets quality standards.
Prototype, spec precisely, and partner with engineers as a peer to demonstrate how to interpret designs and interactions.
Close the gap between intended design and shipped product by working directly in the codebase and with front-end engineers.
Help grow and shape the Design Engineer role and discipline.
Collaborate with team members at all levels to identify and solve problems across current products.
Pioneer new solutions as the company builds out the privacy layer for the Internet.
Level up products through exploring and testing concepts that improve overall experience and increase delight.
Autonomously lead highly impactful projects that scale across millions of users.
Assess vague problems, propose high-impact solutions, and execute them against success criteria.
Have a voice in all product-related design decisions.
Work on a team dedicated to an ethical, privacy-by-design approach.
Apply hands-on design engineering skills.
Define requirements and develop tools that help accelerate design and engineering workflows, and retain quality and consistency of the design system.
Prototype in code to a production standard.
Implement motion and interaction as implemented behavior, not just specified intent.
Structure a design system beyond component inventory.
Manage projects of varying complexity, from proposal through execution and release.
Work transparently and collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders and contributors.
Apply agentic solutions into everyday project management and design execution workflows.
Write creative briefs that clearly define and communicate project goals, rationale, and success metrics with stakeholders.
Leverage qualitative and quantitative data in driving decisions forward.
Instrument own work for measurement.
Take initiative in generating ideas and carrying them forward with urgency and discretion.
Work openly and collaboratively.