Principal Design Engineer

Depot; United Kingdom; Remote; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading software collaboration firm is seeking a Design Engineer to advance its mission. The ideal candidate will have over 7 years of design experience, strong skills in prototyping, and a desire for ownership. This role involves hands-on collaboration with engineers to deliver quality solutions, creating high-fidelity designs and mockups. The company values data-driven decisions and encourages self-starters to thrive in a distributed work environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience designing software.
• Must be a self-starter comfortable with ambiguity.
• Strong desire for ownership and goal execution.

Responsibilities

• Pair closely with engineering to deliver projects.
• Communicate with Depot customers to improve design.
• Create mockups, prototypes, and high-fidelity visuals.

Skills

Designing software

Prototyping with Figma

Strong communication skills

Ability to work asynchronously

Problem-solving

Tools

Figma

HTML/CSS

Job description

At Depot, we are on a mission to redefine software collaboration and accelerate developers everywhere. We are creating a build performance and developer platform unlike any other, combining performance, empathy, and centralized collaboration to enable companies to iterate exponentially faster.

We are embarking on the next phase of Depot, which aims to redefine the software development process. Everyone at Depot is inspired by the opportunity to help developers ship and collaborate faster than ever before. We are all builders and care deeply about the quality of our work.

We believe that by focusing on performance, empathy, and quality, we are creating a gravitational pull towards Depot, both the team and the product. This is the foundation on which all other things are built.

We are looking to hire our first Design Engineer who can further advance our mission to provide not just the fastest place to collaborate on software, but the highest quality as well.

For this role, we expect you to be a seasoned expert, have robust design skills, sharp product thinking, and the ability to engage deeply in technical discussions. We work as a small team where engineers and designers work side by side to test ideas, build proof of concepts, and ultimately ship quality solutions to customers. You will be a key contributor and have ownership & autonomy to see projects through from beginning to end.

Please note: We are an equal opportunity employer and remote-only company. At this time, we can only support hiring within North America and Europe for this role.

Responsibilities

• You will pair closely with engineering and founders to initiate and deliver roadmap projects hands-on.
• You will communicate with existing Depot customers and users to better understand where the overall design could be better, and then you’ll build the solution.
• Identify opportunities to redesign key screens and various flows to enhance the overall product, addressing both major issues and minor paper cut types that Depot users encounter.
• Create mockups, prototypes, and high-fidelity visuals to communicate ideas and describe their execution.
• Implement a lightweight design system of components to allow others to implement your overall vision of product design for Depot.
• Help with hiring new team members who can help push Depot’s team and product forward.

What we’re looking for

• 7+ years of experience designing software
• Must be a self-starter who is excited about hard challenges and is comfortable working in an environment with ambiguity at times
• Ability to take complex problems and feedback, then distill them down to design clear and focused solutions
• Capable of asking questions, experimenting, and advocating for what you feel is right
• Experience prototyping ideas with tools like Figma (and beyond using AI, HTML/CSS, etc)
• A strong desire for ownership, you should be able to both define goals & execute on them from idea to measurement
• Strong written and verbal communication skills & comfort collaborating with colleagues asynchronously across time zones – much of our work is async

Depot values and culture

• We’re only going to get more distributed as time goes on. As such, there is always stuff happening across Depot so we value folks who thrive in that type of environment.
• We’re not your family and don’t pretend to be. We expect you to get things done and work hard to help us meet your goals. But you should spend time with your family and friends, so you should find the balance that accomplishes both.
• We’re a small team and aim to accomplish massive things as a lean team. Everyone who works at Depot is a self starter and is deeply passionate about the problems we’re solving, and want to solve them well.
• We want you to own it. We firmly believe that ownership is the key to growth and part of that growth is making the choices, and owning the success, failure, and lessons learned that comes with those choices.
• We value data. We make decisions based on what the data tells us and what customers need from us. Folks thrive at Depot by being data driven in their decision making.

We are an equal opportunity employer.