Staff Design Technologist

Kong; Toronto; On-site; CAD 194,000 - 284,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong Inc. is hiring a Staff Design Technologist to join our Product Design team in Toronto. You’ll bridge design and frontend engineering, focus on AI-enabled workflows, and contribute to a scalable design systems effort.

The role blends design craft with tooling and scripting to accelerate design work across the team. You’ll collaborate with designers and frontend engineers to push for cohesive patterns, better governance, and accessible experiences while staying ahead of AI tooling and UI

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in Design Engineering, Product Design, Design Systems, or similar hybrid roles.
• Strong product and visual design instincts for technical products.
• Technical fluency with modern frontend systems to collaborate with engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI-enabled design workflows and build prototyping starter kits and tools.
• Bridge design and engineering, reducing drift between design and implementation.
• Drive platform UI cohesion and reusable patterns across products.
• Raise the bar on visual quality, interaction design, and usability across technical experiences.

Skills

Design engineering

Product design

Design systems

Frontend collaboration

AI tooling

Figma workflows

Storybook

Communication

Systems thinking

Tools

Figma

CodeConnect

Design tokens

Storybook

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence?

About The Role

Kong is building the future of AI connectivity and API management. We're hiring a Staff Design Technologist to sit at the intersection of product design, design systems, and frontend implementation — shaping how design and engineering work together more effectively at scale.

You'll join our ~20-person Product Design team, reporting to the VP of Design, as the second specialist focused on design systems. Our design systems practice is already strong — you'll contribute across all of it while helping us push into new territory: AI-enabled design workflows, deeper design engineering convergence, and how we design for emerging agent-driven experiences.

We're looking for someone with strong product and visual design instincts who has the technical fluency and collaboration skills to bridge design and engineering. Roughly half your time will be in design tools; the other half in code, tooling, and cross-functional collaboration

What You’ll Do

Lead AI-enabled design workflows

• Build and maintain our AI prototyping starter kits, repos, and conventions
• Write internal scripts, tools, and workflows that accelerate how the Product Design team works
• Experiment with MCP Apps (ext-apps) and emerging agent UI patterns — helping establish how Kong designs for AI-native and agent-driven experiences
• Stay close to what's emerging in AI tooling and enable the team on the latest best practices

Be a bridge between design and engineering

• Build trusted, ongoing relationships with frontend engineers
• Help reduce drift between design and implementation systems, in service of both teams

Drive platform UI cohesion

• Collaborate with your design systems colleagues, designers, and engineers to identify or revamp reusable patterns
• Audit and identify opportunities to reduce one-off patterns and improve cross-product cohesion
• Contribute to documentation, usage guidance, and governance — and enable the team effectively on changes

Raise the bar on craft

• Help establish a high standard for visual quality, interaction design, and usability across technical product experiences
• Bring strong judgment around when to follow conventions versus when to push forward
• Partner with designers to improve consistency, polish, and accessibility

What You’ll Bring

• 8+ years of experience in Design Engineering, Product Design, Design Systems, or similar hybrid roles — rooted in design
• Strong product and visual design instincts, especially for technical or developer-focused products
• Technical fluency with modern frontend systems — enough to collaborate deeply with engineers, contribute meaningfully to shared systems, and build internal tooling
• Hands-on experience with AI tooling, prototyping workflows, or building design-adjacent scripts and automations
• Familiarity with Figma code workflows — CodeConnect, design tokens, component APIs, Storybook, or similar
• Experience working closely with both designers and frontend engineers as a collaborative partner
• Genuine excitement about where AI is taking product development — and the initiative to help your team get there
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to build trust across disciplines
• Strong systems thinking and ability to balance short-term pragmatism with long-term scalability

Portfolio Expectations

A portfolio, site, and/or repo demonstrating:

• Strong visual and interaction design craft
• AI Prototyping, tooling, and technical experimentation
• Design systems and frontend collaboration work
• Multiple examples of driving meaningful impact backed by an effective process

About Kong

Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform, Kong Konnect, enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI models. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.

Compensation Range: $140K - $205K