Senior Design Engineer

StepStone Group; Greater London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

29 days holiday

Private medical and dental

Pension matching 4-5%

24/7 Employee Assistance Programme

Life Assurance

Cycle to work

Hybrid work model

Dog-friendly office

Job summary

The Stepstone Group is seeking a Senior Design Engineer to join our Design Engineering function. You will be a design systems expert, building robust, scalable components and patterns, and shaping the AI prototyping infrastructure.

Collaborate with front-end engineers, contribute to production-ready design system, and help embed AI into daily workflows. This role combines design craft with engineering and a strong focus on accessibility and quality.

Qualifications

• Design Systems Craft: Proven track record shipping high-quality components and patterns, with exceptional attention to interaction, visual design, motion, accessibility, and documentation. This is a design role first.
• T-Shaped Technical Skill: Broad design literacy plus deep capability in component engineering, tokens/design infrastructure, or prototyping, and comfortable working in code alongside front-end engineers.
• AI-Forward Mindset: Actively applies AI to design system and prototyping work, and helps others do the same.
• Accessibility Advocate: Deep knowledge of accessibility standards and a commitment to an inclusive, usable system.
• Systems Thinker and Collaborator: Balances consistency with flexibility as the system scales, builds strong partnerships across design and engineering, and clearly explains decisions to both audiences.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the design of robust, scalable, accessible components and patterns, with clear visual logic, elegant interaction states, and exceptional craft.
• Build reusable, well-tested components that are easy for other designers and engineers to adopt and integrate.
• Build out and maintain our AI prototyping infrastructure (repos, hosting, naming and discoverability, access) so teams can create coded, data-connected prototypes and test ideas faster.
• Help embed AI into how the design team works day to day: component creation, documentation, design-to-code handoff, and beyond.
• Raise the quality bar for shipped UI through design QA, accessibility and performance standards.

Skills

Design systems craft

T-shaped technical skill

AI-forward mindset

Accessibility advocate

Systems thinker & collaborator

Job description

• Legal Entity: The Stepstone Group EMEA GmbH

Company Description

At The Stepstone Group, we have a simple yet very important mission: The right job for everyone. Using our data, platform, and technology, we create opportunities for jobseekers and companies around the world to find a perfect match in fair and equitable way. With over 20 brands across 30+ countries, we strive for fair and unbiased hiring.

Join our team of 3,000+ employees and be part of reshaping the labour market and becoming the world’s leading job platform.

Job Description

Design at Stepstone

Find the right job for everyone. Our mission reflects how design has been part of our DNA for more than a decade. Our product design organisation has evolved through this time and today we are a team of 30+ designers including Design Operations, Design System, Design Foundation and Design Engineer roles. We are also part of a wider design organisation including our dedicated User Research team of +10 people.

As a product design team, we have designers in key senior leadership positions and therefore you will always have support pushing for strategical initiatives across the business.

We are spread across both the B2C and B2B sides of the business, providing an end-to-end experience, for both candidates and recruiters alike.

The Role

We're redefining the job search and recruitment experience, and the design system is critical infrastructure for how we deliver that at quality. As a Senior Design Engineer, you're first and foremost a design systems expert with strong craft and design fundamentals: someone who can design and build robust, scalable components and patterns. What sets this role apart is a strong understanding of AI, which you'll use to build out our AI prototyping infrastructure and help embed the design system into how our team operates day to day.

Design Engineering is a newly established function within the design system team, and you'll help shape what it becomes. You'll work closely with front-end engineering, helping evolve the coded design system (tokens, components and patterns), while growing our AI prototyping ecosystem and enabling the wider design team to adopt this new way of working: designing in production ready code.

Your responsibilities:

• Contribute to the design of robust, scalable, accessible components and patterns, with clear visual logic, elegant interaction states, and exceptional craft.
• Build reusable, well-tested components that are easy for other designers and engineers to adopt and integrate.
• Build out and maintain our AI prototyping infrastructure (repos, hosting, naming and discoverability, access) so teams can create coded, data-connected prototypes and test ideas faster.
• Help embed AI into how the design team works day to day: component creation, documentation, design-to-code handoff, and beyond.
• Raise the quality bar for shipped UI through design QA, accessibility and performance standards.

Qualifications

• Design Systems Craft: Proven track record shipping high-quality components and patterns, with exceptional attention to interaction, visual design, motion, accessibility, and documentation. This is a design role first.
• T-Shaped Technical Skill: Broad design literacy plus deep capability in component engineering, tokens/design infrastructure, or prototyping, and comfortable working in code alongside front-end engineers.
• AI-Forward Mindset: Actively applies AI to design system and prototyping work, and helps others do the same.
• Accessibility Advocate: Deep knowledge of accessibility standards and a commitment to an inclusive, usable system.
• Systems Thinker and Collaborator: Balances consistency with flexibility as the system scales, builds strong partnerships across design and engineering, and clearly explains decisions to both audiences.

Additional Information

We’re a community here that cares as much about your life outside work as how you feel when you’re with us. Because your job shouldn’t take over your life, it should enrich it. Here are some of the benefits we offer:

• 29 days holiday allowance + bank holidays
• Private medical and dental healthcare
• Matching pension contribution of 4 or 5% (after 3 years of service up to 10%)
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme
• Life Assurance Cover
• Cycle to work scheme
• Hybrid working model(3 days working fromthe office)
• and you can bring your dog to the office onMondays and Fridays!

Our commitment

Equal opportunities are important to us. We believe that diversity and inclusion at The Stepstone Group are critical to our success as a global company, so we want to recruit, develop, and keep the best talent. We encourage applications from everyone, regardless of background, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, ethnicity, belief, age, family or parental status, and any other characteristic.

As a global business we further our DEI and sustainability progress by working with national and international bodies and are proud to have been recognised for our work - both locally and internationally, including:

• Fertility Friendly Employer, accredited by Fertility Matters at Work
• RIDI (Recruitment Industry Disability) Awards: Inclusive Technology Award 2024
• Stonewall: Gold Award
• Stonewall: Top 100 Workplace Equality Index (85)