Design Engineer

Writer; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Parental leave

Hybrid culture

Employee stock options

Learning & development stipend

London office spaces

Job summary

Writer is seeking a frontend design systems lead to own the Writer Design System (WDS), ensuring production-ready components across surfaces. You will partner with design, product, and engineering to ship design-led UI that scales with AI-driven tooling, maintain cross-team standards, and push for accessibility and performance in every interaction.

You’ll influence the technical direction of the design system, extend primitives, and collaborate closely with the Director of Product Design to

Qualifications

• Experience building production frontends with TypeScript and React.
• Experience owning a design system or shared platform across an engineering org.
• Strong understanding of accessibility and performance in UI components.

Responsibilities

• Own the Writer Design System (WDS) and ensure it is complete and trustworthy.
• Design and build production-ready UI components from concept to ship.
• Improve design-to-code workflows and drive adoption across teams.
• Collaborate with designers, PMs, and engineers to shape product surfaces and standards.

Skills

TypeScript

React

Design systems

Front-end performance

Accessibility

Tools

Figma

Storybook

Framer Motion

GSAP

Lottie

Job description

• Design engineers sit at the intersection of design and engineering. As a design engineer at WRITER, you'll own the Writer Design System (WDS) - how it's built, how it's maintained, and how both humans and AI agents use it to ship product


• This role matters more now than ever. AI coding agents write more of our production code, and they ship whatever they find. A design system that’s incomplete or inconsistent doesn’t just slow designers down; it gets compounded at scale by every agent that builds against it


• You’ll make sure WRITER’s core UI library is complete and trustworthy enough to build on, working closely with the designers, PMs, and engineers who rely on it every day


• You’ll help shape the surfaces that define how our product feels to use, and help set the standard and process for how the EPD org ships product


• This role will be reporting to the Director of product design


• Own the Writer Design System (WDS) as your primary domain - agentify and maintain it, ensuring it's optimized for both humans and AI agents building with it


• Design and build production-quality UI components and features, owning surfaces from sketch to ship


• Ship design-led work that wouldn't survive an engineering backlog - polish passes, micro-interactions, and brand moments that make the product feel alive


• Architect new primitives and extend the system’s core components, shaping its technical direction while keeping documentation, examples, and libraries in sync across Figma, .md skills, and Storybook


• Uphold the bar for front-end craft across accessibility, motion feel, consistency, and quality, ensuring accessibility is baked into every design system component


• Help shape the design-to-code workflow, researching the latest tools and practices to unlock org-wide productivity and democratize workflows across the EPD organization


• Partner with designers, PMs, and engineering leads to measure WDS adoption, close gaps, and make sure shipped features meet design system standards

Benefits

• Health: Selection of employer-covered medical plans, plus dental, vision, life insurance, and FSA.


• Family-friendly: Competitive parental leave policy, working parents can truly own their schedules.


• Hybrid culture: We're built around a mix of in office collaboration and remote work when needed.


• Finance: Company stock options, plus a 401k plan with employer contributions.


• Growth: Learning and development stipend and generous PTO.


• SF/NY/London office space: Three beautiful sunny offices in three incredibly exciting cities.

We are open to hiring for this role at multiple levels, with compensation ranges scaled to match your experience, expertise, and the scope of the roleA demonstrable obsession with craft, backed by a portfolio, side projects, GitHub, or production work that includes systems-level work and not just feature workExperience with AI product surfaces - tool-call UIs, streaming responses, agent state, and dynamic UI rendering - and comfort navigating ambiguous, cross-team problems with good judgment about when to loop others inA Genuine commitment to WRITER's values of Connect, Challenge, and Own4-8+ years building production frontends with TypeScript and React, with a track record of owning a system, platform, or surface end-to-end rather than individual featuresFluency in Figma at expert level - auto-layout, variants, variables, and code connect - and proficiency with design engineering technologies like framer-motion, gsap, and lottie for web-based animationSolid instincts for animation principles including easing curves, choreography, anticipation, follow-through, interruptibility, and perceived performanceExperience driving adoption of a design system or shared platform across an engineering org, with a track record of influencing technical or design direction beyond your immediate team