Design Engineer

Carpe; Durham (NC); On-site; USD 85,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Downtown Durham office

Job summary

Carpe is seeking a UX/UI Designer & Web Developer to elevate our website’s look, feel, and performance from our downtown Durham office. You will reframe pages, design new landing experiences, and collaborate with a senior web developer and AI tools to implement front-end solutions.

You’ll own the front-end experience, drive testing programs, and ensure pixel-perfect responsiveness from mobile to desktop while aligning with brand standards and campaigns.

Qualifications

• 3+ years designing and building UX flows for websites, preferably ecommerce or conversion-focused.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating visual and interaction design, typography, layout, and hierarchy.
• Proficiency using AI tools to develop UX designs into code.
• Mastery of responsive design—mobile-first and pixel-perfect across breakpoints.
• Fluency with modern design tools (Figma or equivalent) and rapid production.
• Extreme attention to detail: catch misalignments, broken states, and edge cases.
• Curiosity about user behavior and conversion; eager to test.
• Strong communication to explain design decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design, reframe, and upgrade landing pages, funnels, and website experiences for conversion and clarity.
• Translate new designs into clean, working code and bring A/B wins into permanent improvements.
• Deliver responsive, pixel-perfect UX across mobile, tablet, and desktop.
• Own UX/UI quality across the site: visual consistency and polish on every page.
• Prototype and iterate quickly with a bias toward shipping and measurement.
• Sanity-check work to catch issues before customers see them.
• Maintain and extend the design system and component patterns as the site grows.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with ecommerce, marketing, brand, and retail teams.

Skills

UX design

Web development

Mobile-first design

Conversion optimization

AI-assisted coding

Design systems

Communication skills

Tools

Figma

Shopify

HTML/CSS

Job description

Department: Ecommerce | Reports To: VP of Ecommerce | Location: On-site, Durham, NC

About Carpe

Carpe is the fastest-growing deodorant brand in the US. Our team is composed of ~30 insanely smart people working together in person in downtown Durham, NC. Our office is rather open with many private niches, and our energy level is HIGH.

About the Role

We are looking for a UX/UI Designer & Web Developer who will level up how our website looks, feels, and performs. This is a hybrid design-and-build role: you will reframe and upgrade existing pages, design new landing pages, funnels, and on-site experiences, and work hand-in-hand with our senior web developer and AI development tools to take over the front end and bring those designs to life. You are the person who notices a button sitting two pixels off, and the person who cares that it looks that clean on every screen size.

Much of your day-to-day direction will come from the head of our ecommerce business, and to start, you will partner closely with our web developer day to day. You will framework new designs and launch tests with the growth engineer's support, with the goal of owning more of the front end and the testing program yourself while using AI tools for code development. The right candidate pairs genuinely excellent design taste with enough technical fluency to implement, debug, and iterate.

What You'll Do

• Design, reframe, and upgrade landing pages, funnels, and website experiences that optimize for conversion rate, clarity, and ease of use.
• Framework new designs and translate them into clean, working code, turning A/B testing wins into permanent site improvements.
• Deliver responsive, pixel-perfect UX across every screen size - mobile-first, since the majority of our traffic is mobile, but flawless on tablet and desktop too.
• Own UX/UI quality across the site - visual consistency, hierarchy, responsiveness, and polish on every page that ships.
• Prototype and iterate quickly with a bias toward shipping and measuring.
• Sanity-check your own work obsessively: catch broken states, misalignment, slow loads, and edge cases before customers do.
• Maintain and extend the design system and component patterns so the site stays consistent as it grows.
• Collaborate cross-functionally (ecommerce, marketing, brand, retail) to keep the site aligned with campaigns, launches, and brand standards.

What We're Looking For

• 3+ years designing and building UX flows for websites - ideally in an ecommerce or conversion-focused environment.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating excellent visual and interaction design: typography, layout, hierarchy, and a clean, modern aesthetic.
• Proficiency in using AI tools to develop UX designs into code.
• Mastery of responsive design - you build mobile-first and make every breakpoint pixel-perfect, from small phones to large desktop monitors.
• Fluency in modern design tools (Figma or equivalent) and the ability to move fast from concept to production.
• Extreme attention to detail - you actively hunt for the pixel that's off, the state that breaks, the copy that's misaligned. You look for errors, not just past them.
• Curiosity about user behavior and conversion, and eagerness to partner on a growing testing program - you want to know why a page performs, not just that it does.
• Strong communication skills; able to explain design decisions and tradeoffs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Background

Experience working in or owning a CRO / A/B testing program and acting on the results is particularly valuable. Familiarity with Shopify (themes, Liquid) or a comparable ecommerce platform is a strong plus, as is comfort working alongside analytics and data to define what a test is really measuring. An understanding of accessibility, page-speed, and mobile-first design principles will help you stand out.

Why This Role

This is a high-visibility, high-autonomy position with direct influence over how every customer experiences Carpe. You will own the surface where design meets revenue, and you will have the freedom to build, test, and ship the ideas that move it.