Design Engineer

White Circle; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Flexible time off

Health insurance

Mental health support

401(k)

Learning & development

Equipment & tools

Team off-sites

Job summary

White Circle is seeking a Design Engineer to translate complex AI safety workflows into simple interfaces used by engineering and research teams daily. You’ll move from Figma exploration to production-ready React code, owning design systems in both realms and ensuring pixel-perfect delivery.

You’ll collaborate with product, engineering, and research; bring motion, performance, and accessibility to life, and ship fast with full ownership of the UX from concept to code.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in product design, frontend engineering, or design engineering with a portfolio of design and shipped code.
• Strong frontend skills: React, TypeScript, and modern CSS techniques.
• Experience building and maintaining design systems in code (tokens, components, APIs).
• Deep Figma knowledge: Auto Layout, Components, Variants, Prototyping.
• Experience with motion/animation in code (Framer Motion, CSS transitions).
• Track record designing clear, functional web interfaces for technical or data-heavy products.
• Solid accessibility knowledge (WCAG, keyboard navigation, ARIA) and responsive design.
• Comfort working in a real codebase: Git, code review, collaboration with engineers.
• Daily use of AI tools in workflow to produce production-quality results.

Responsibilities

• Design and build product interfaces end to end from Figma to production-ready React code.
• Own design system in Figma and code: tokens, components, variants, documentation; keep in sync.
• Build and polish UI components with attention to states, edge cases, accessibility, and performance.
• Prototype interactions and new flows in code to test ideas with real data.
• Create motion and micro-interactions that clarify complex workflows.
• Raise quality bar: spot UI inconsistencies, fix them, ship.
• Collaborate directly with product, engineering, and research; expect fast iterations and ownership.

Skills

React

TypeScript

CSS (Flexbox/Grid)

Figma

Design Systems

Framer Motion

Accessibility

Git

AI Tools

Tools

Storybook

Next.js

Vite

Tailwind CSS

Radix UI

Job description

TL;DR: We’re looking for a Design Engineer to turn complex AI safety workflows into simple, intuitive interfaces used by engineering and research teams every day. You’ll work across design and code: shape flows in Figma, then build them in production with React, TypeScript and our component library. You’ll own the gap between "designed" and "shipped" so that what users get is exactly what was intended, down to the last pixel and transition.

About White Circle

White Circle is an AI Safety company building the safety, reliability, and optimization layer for AI systems. At the core of our platform are policies – simple natural-language rules that define what an AI model should and shouldn’t do. We automatically test, enforce, and continuously improve these policies at scale.

• We’ve recently raised our Series A funding round, taking our total funding to $70M. Our investors include top funds, founders, and senior leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, HuggingFace, Mistral, DeepMind, Datadog, Sentry, and others
• We process over one hundred million API calls every month
• We fine-tune and train our own LLMs so they run faster and cheaper than any open or proprietary model

We’re a small, highly focused team. If you want to work deeply on hard problems, see your work ship to production quickly, and influence how AI safety is actually built – you’re the one we need

What you’ll do

• Design and build product interfaces end to end, from Figma exploration to production-ready React code
• Own our design system in both Figma and code: tokens, components, variants, documentation. Keep the two in sync
• Build and polish UI components with attention to states, edge cases, accessibility, and performance
• Prototype interactions and new flows in code to test ideas with real data before we commit to them
• Craft motion and micro-interactions that make complex workflows feel clear and responsive
• Raise the quality bar of the product: spot UI inconsistencies, fix them yourself, ship
• Work directly with product, engineering, and research. Expect fast iterations and full ownership

What we’re looking for

• 6+ years of experience in product design, frontend engineering, or design engineering, with a portfolio showing both design and shipped code
• Strong frontend skills: React, TypeScript, modern CSS (Flexbox, Grid, custom properties, container queries)
• Experience building and maintaining design systems in code, e.g. design tokens, component APIs, Storybook or similar
• Deep Figma knowledge: Auto Layout, Components, Variants, Variables, Prototyping
• Experience with motion and animation in code (Framer Motion / Motion, CSS transitions, or similar)
• A track record of designing clear, functional web interfaces, ideally for technical or data-heavy products (dashboards, developer tools, B2B SaaS)
• Solid grasp of accessibility (WCAG, keyboard navigation, ARIA) and responsive design
• Comfort working in a real codebase: Git, code review, working alongside engineers
• You use AI tools daily in your workflow (Cursor, Claude Code, v0, or similar) and know how to get production-quality results out of them

Bonus points

• Experience with Tailwind CSS, Radix UI / shadcn/ui, or other headless component libraries
• Next.js or Vite experience
• Data visualization (D3, Recharts, visx)
• Figma plugin or Figma-to-code pipeline experience (Tokens Studio, Style Dictionary, Code Connect)
• Interest in AI safety, LLMs, or developer tooling

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive compensation package, including equity
• Flexible time off
• Health insurance
• Mental health support, including coverage for therapy when you need it
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Learning and development support for courses, conferences, and opportunities to grow your skills
• All the hardware, subscriptions, tools, and services you need
• Team off-sites twice a year: we’ve recently been to the Alps, Saint-Tropez, and Marbella

Process

• Intro call (25 min)
• Take-home assignment
• Interview with Head of Design & Creative and Full-stack Engineer (45 min)
• Additional interview (depending on the interview process)