UX Software Engineer I (Contractor)

Alation•Redwood City, CA

7d•Hybrid

About The Position

Alation is pioneering the next era of data intelligence — powered by AI agents and trusted data. Organizations around the world rely on Alation to drive self-service analytics, cloud transformation, data governance, and AI innovation. Our technology helps enterprises connect people and data to make faster, smarter, and more confident decisions. With more than $340M in funding – valued at over $1.7 billion and more than 650 customers, including 40% of the Fortune 100. As data becomes the foundation of every business, Alation is leading the way in helping organizations unlock their full potential. By bringing intelligence, automation, and trust to every interaction, we empower customers to scale data-driven innovation with confidence and speed. Joining Alation means being part of a winning team shaping the future of AI-powered data intelligence. We move fast, think big, and deliver results together. We're looking for a UX Engineer I to join the Applied AI squad at Alation. You'll contribute frontend code across the product — and bring the design sensibility to make it good. That means you're not just building what's specced; you're the person who notices when interactions are inconsistent, who thinks about the component library holistically, and who makes thoughtful decisions about color, hierarchy, progressive disclosure, and making the product intuitive to use. You'll collaborate closely with product management and engineering on a workspace that combines copilot interactions, data visualization, and generative workflows. Your job is to ship frontend code that's well-built and well-designed. We work in a hybrid model—you’ll join us in our Redwood City office 2 days per week (Tue/Thurs) to collaborate, connect, and enjoy a team atmosphere! Local candidates only, no relocation is offered. This is a full time contract. $40.00/hr. Open to contract-to-hire.

Requirements

Recently completed a degree in CS, HCI, interaction design, product design, or a related field.
Write frontend code. React, TypeScript, HTML/CSS — you can work in a real codebase with version control and code review, not just a sandbox.
Have a portfolio that shows things you designed and built. We want to see work where you had ownership of the interaction, thinking and the implementation. Be ready to talk through the decisions, not just the deliverables.
Have a design eye. You notice when something's off — inconsistent patterns, unclear hierarchy, interactions that don't feel right — and you know how to fix it, not just flag it.
AI-native in your workflow. You use AI tools to move faster, but you have the design judgment to direct the output and know when it's not good enough.
Fast, curious, and low-ego. You'd rather ship and learn than polish in isolation.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing AI-powered interfaces: copilots, chat-based workflows, or generative UX patterns.
Familiarity with data-dense interfaces — dashboards, tables, multi-panel layouts.

Responsibilities

Contribute frontend code in our production codebase.
Write clean, reviewable code and work within our stack and development workflow.
Bring design judgment to everything you build. Color auditing, interaction consistency, component reuse, information hierarchy, progressive disclosure — you care about this stuff and you act on it.
Work through ambiguous product problems alongside PM and engineering. Identify the use cases, map the user mental models, and make opinionated design decisions grounded in that understanding.
Iterate based on feedback from the team and from real users. Treat designs as hypotheses to be tested, not deliverables to be handed off.