Design Engineer

Octopus Legacy; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

27 days holiday + bank holidays + your

Pension 3% contribution

Hybrid in London

Job summary

Octopus Legacy Limited is seeking an experienced Design Engineer to own the component library and design tokens, shaping the design system across multiple teams and turning rough ideas into shipped interfaces. You’ll design flows in Figma and implement them in React and TypeScript.

You’ll not get a pixel-perfect mock; you’ll create it, ship it, and watch how people use it to improve the product. We’re AI-native and value architecture, judgement, and attention to detail, with a hybrid

Qualifications

• Portfolio shows both design and code.
• Strong Figma/Paper experience: components, variables, auto layout.
• Production React and TypeScript.
• Taste, and the ability to explain it to an engineer in terms they’ll act on.

Responsibilities

• Design flows and interfaces in Figma, then build them in React.
• Own the component library and design tokens, and keep Figma and code saying the same thing.
• Make hard things feel calm. Someone planning for their own death shouldn’t have to fight a form.
• Hold the line on accessibility. Our users span every age and ability.
• Prototype fast, so Product and engineers can react to something real instead of a paragraph.

Skills

React

TypeScript

Figma

Design systems

Portfolio

Tools

Next.js

Vue

Paper

Job description

When someone dies, their family inherits a mountain of admin. A will is the single most useful thing that makes it smaller, but only if it’s correct, current and actually says what the person meant. That’s the bar every screen we ship has to clear, and it has to feel calm while it does.

As our design engineer, you’ll work across every team rather than inside one. You’ll own the component library and design tokens, take features from rough idea to shipped interface, and decide what good looks like.

Nobody will hand you a pixel-perfect mock to implement. You’ll make the mock, then make it real, then watch how people use it and change it.

The team

You’ll work with every team: the engineers building Ollie, the tools our advisors and Estate Planning Consultants use every day, and our web presence. You’ll be closest to Product and the team leads, and the design system is yours to shape.

We work in small, stable teams that own a product area end to end, from the first conversation with legal to the alert that fires if it breaks. Nobody hands you a ticket and walks away. Teams decide how to solve the problems in front of them, and often which problems are worth solving at all. Decisions are written down, reviewed kindly and revisited when we learn something new.

We’re AI-native. Frontier models, best-in-class agentic tooling, and nobody counts tokens. That pushes the job away from boilerplate and towards the parts that need a person: architecture, judgement, and getting the detail right. Families come to us for a will or for probate, not for software, so we’re not racing the models. Every time they improve, so does the service families get. We ship to production 20+ times a day across 7+ services.

What you’ll do

Most weeks are a mix of designing, building and unblocking other teams. Some of the work you’ll pick up:

• Design flows and interfaces in Figma, then build them in React. Same person, same week.
• Own the component library and design tokens, and keep Figma and code saying the same thing.
• Make hard things feel calm. Someone planning for their own death shouldn’t have to fight a form.
• Hold the line on accessibility. Our users span every age and ability.
• Prototype fast, so Product and engineers can react to something real instead of a paragraph.

Your first 90 days

• [ ] Week one: ship a UI change to production, paired with someone who knows the codebase.
• [ ] Audit the component library against Figma and fix the worst of the drift.
• [ ] Take one feature from rough idea to shipped interface, designed and built by you.

What we’re looking for

We care more about how you approach problems than a list of keywords. That said, here’s what tends to make someone successful in this role.

You’ll need

• A portfolio that shows both the design and the code behind it.
• Strong Figma/Paper experience: components, variables, auto layout, the unglamorous structure that makes a system scale.
• Production React and TypeScript.
• Taste, and the ability to explain it to an engineer in terms they’ll act on.

Nice to have

bonus

• Vue. Some of our estate still uses it.
• A pipeline from Figma variables to code tokens, built by you.
• Motion and micro-interactions that earn their place.
• Next.js or another server-rendered React setup.

What you’ll work with

Design

• Figma / Paper for components, variables, auto layout

Languages

• Typescript

Frameworks

• React
• Next.js

Also

• Vue parts of the estate still use this

The honest bits

Every product has them. Better you hear it from us.

Not every screen lives in the design system yet. Some are older and look it. Deciding what to fix first is your call.

You’re one person across every team. Saying “not yet” is part of the job, and we’ll back you when you do.

Regulated, sensitive data. Some changes need a second pair of eyes from legal, and that’s on purpose.

We ship often, but “move fast and break things” isn’t an option when the thing is someone’s will.

You’ll probably enjoy this if

• You can’t leave a misaligned label alone, and you know how to fix it in code.
• You’d rather ship something simple and kind than impressive and confusing.
• You can talk about death plainly. Our users are planning for it or living through it.

What we offer

Listed, not teased. If something matters to you and isn’t here, ask in your first call.

Holiday: 27 days + bank holidays + your birthday

Pension: 3% contribution

Working pattern: Hybrid. In the office Tuesday to Thursday at Monument, London

Contract: Permanent

Learning: Time carved out for it, plus budget agreed case by case

A Will, on us: Free will for you, and a discount for friends and family

Tools: Whatever makes you fastest. Frontier models, agentic tooling, no token budget.

Ownership: Real decisions from week one. You’ll be trusted with the call and backed when it’s hard.