Sr Design Engineer

Adobe•San Jose, CA

4d•$139,000 - $257,550

About The Position

The Design Technology Team empowers Adobe’s Design organization through tools, services, and other resources. Our mission is to find points of friction within the design process and optimize them, use technology like AI and automation to simplify workflows, and build foundational services for designers and builders at Adobe. Our team delivers solutions across the product lifecycle, from AI-assisted prototyping to deployment and hosting infrastructure. We're looking for a Senior Engineer to build and scale these platforms. You'll work full-stack, building everything from React and Web Components on the frontend to Node.js services and AI/LLM integrations on the backend. This is a role for someone who understands that great engineering for designers requires deep empathy for how designers work, someone who thinks about developer experience and design system architecture with equal care. You'll collaborate closely with the team to ship production-quality tools used by designers across Adobe. You'll integrate modern AI capabilities into design workflows, build applications that feel intuitive to use, and solve the unique technical challenges of building tools for creative professionals. If you love building developer/designer tools, care deeply about craft and user experience, and want to shape the future of how designers work at Adobe, we'd love to meet you.

Requirements

5–8 years of software engineering experience building web applications and developer tools
Strong frontend development skills with React and modern JavaScript/TypeScript
Experience with Web Components (Lit or similar) or willingness to learn quickly
Solid backend development experience with Node.js and REST APIs
Hands-on experience building with AI/LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, or similar)
Understanding of design systems and component library architecture—you've built or contributed to one before
Experience with build tools, package management (npm), and modern development workflows
Strong grasp of Git workflows and collaborative development practices
Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate with designers, product managers, and other engineers
Design sensibility, you understand what makes a good user experience and care about the details

Nice To Haves

Experience with TypeScript in production codebases
Familiarity with design tools like Figma and understanding of design-to-code workflows
Experience with prompt engineering, RAG architectures, or AI agent frameworks
Background in developer experience (DX) or building tools for other engineers/designers
Familiarity with Adobe's creative tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, Firefly, Express)
Experience with Vite, Rollup, or other modern build tooling
Understanding of accessibility standards (WCAG) and inclusive design practices

Responsibilities

Build Full-Stack Features for Internal Tools & Services
Develop frontend components using React and Lit (Web Components) that feel polished, performant, and intuitive for designers to use
Build backend services in Node.js to support design workflows, AI integrations, asset management, and collaboration features
Architect and implement AI/LLM integrations (OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face) that augment design capabilities in meaningful ways
Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code that other engineers can build on
Support users with questions and problems they face using our tools
Own Technical Architecture & Design System Development
Design and implement scalable component architectures for internal platforms, balancing flexibility, performance, and ease of use
Build developer tooling, build systems, and documentation that make tools & workflows easy to adopt and extend
Collaborate with the team to translate design vision into technical implementation, ensuring high-fidelity execution while identifying technical constraints early
Establish patterns and standards for component development, testing, and versioning
Integrate AI & LLM Capabilities
Build integrations with AI/LLM APIs to power intelligent features in our tools
Design prompt engineering strategies, RAG pipelines, and agent workflows that deliver reliable, useful results
Optimize AI features for performance, cost, and user experience
Know the latest on AI/LLM developments and bring relevant capabilities into the team's products
Collaborate multi-functionally
Partner with designers to understand workflows and struggles, translating user needs into technical solutions
Work with engineering partners across Adobe to create and integrate tools & workflows into existing products and pipelines
Contribute to technical discussions, code reviews, and architectural decisions
Share knowledge with the team and help elevate engineering practices