Design Engineer

Oakwell Hampton Group; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Oakwell Hampton Group invites a Founding Design Engineer to shape the next generation of an AI-focused lab in New York. You will cover the full product lifecycle, crafting interfaces, prototypes, and production-ready front-end code.

The role requires blending pixel-perfect visual design with robust coding discipline, using React, TypeScript, and a deep Figma toolkit, in a fast-paced, in-person startup environment.

Qualifications

• 2–7 years of experience shipping production-grade front-ends in React and TypeScript.
• Strong visual design/UX thinking with shipped code or interactive work.
• Deep mastery of Figma, including auto-layout, components, and prototyping features.

Responsibilities

• Craft UI systems for AI-native surfaces and contribute to a design system from scratch.
• Define UX strategy and interaction patterns for the product.
• Build high-fidelity prototypes (Figma, code-based, or hybrid) to test ideas.

Skills

React

TypeScript

Frontend development

Figma

UI prototyping

Design systems

Animation/visuals

Tools

WebGL

Shader effects

Spline

Rive

After Effects

Framer

Job description

The Hook: Own 1% of a Revolution

We are an elite, stealth applied research lab based in Brooklyn, New York, backed by top-tier investors, AI pioneers, and industry leaders. Our mission is to solve one of the hardest, most inspiring problems in AI: computational creativity, and put creative genius in the hands of everyone.

We are developing a next-generation AI platform engineered from first principles for advanced computational creativity. This is not another "prompt-to-output" generator; we are building an entirely new interaction layer that lets anyone create, edit, and orchestrate complex multimedia like an expert.

Instead of joining a massive tech firm to become a small cog in a large machine, we are offering you the chance to join as a core founding member. As our founders put it: "It is better to own 1% of a revolution than 0.001% of an evolution."

The Role: What You'll Do

At our lab, design is not a downstream function. It is a core mechanism for shaping the user experience. As our Founding Design Engineer, you will span the entire product lifecycle—working as a hybrid "high-craft" builder who handles visual mockups, interactive prototyping, and writes production-ready front-end code.

• Craft UI Systems: Design clean, considered, and visually stunning interfaces for AI-native surfaces, focusing on micro-interactions and motion/hover states. Co-author our design system and component library from scratch.
• Define UX Strategy: Help shape and define the interaction patterns of the product. Question defaults to build trust, precision, and collaboration into generative workflows.
• High-Fidelity Prototyping: Build interactive prototypes (Figma, code-based, or hybrid) to pressure-test and refine ideas rapidly before committing them to full engineering.
• Front-End Engineering: Implement your designs directly into production in React and TypeScript, utilizing AI-assisted coding tools (Claude, Cursor, v0) fluently as part of your daily workflow.
• Collaborate Directly with Leadership: Partner directly with the founders and our seasoned design lead (who brings 14+ years of advertising and product ecosystem expertise) in daily critique and shipping cycles.

Who You Are (The Specs)

We are seeking a rare hybrid candidate who possesses both pixel-level visual sensitivity and rigorous production-level coding discipline:

• Production Stack Experience: 2–7 years of experience shipping production-grade front-ends in React and TypeScript. You must have built real, scalable products with them, not just static mockups or prototype-only code.
• Visual & Interactive Mastery: A stellar portfolio demonstrating both sides of the coin: strong visual design/UX thinking and shipped code, interactive work, live products, or design system contributions we can actually play with.
• Figma Fluency: Deep working mastery of Figma (auto-layout, components, variables, shaders, and prototyping features). Fluency with ancillary tools like Spline, Rive, After Effects, or Framer is a massive plus.
• Aesthetic & Creative Taste: A strong eye for typography, motion, grid systems, and detail. You have a genuine interest in creative domains (film, photography, design, writing) and can feel when something is "off" and fix it yourself.
• Comfort with Ambiguity: You thrive in an intense, fast-paced startup environment. You prefer shipping and refining rapidly over slow, corporate perfection loops.

Nice to Haves:

• Experience with WebGL, shader effects, motion design, or generative visual systems.
• A background in creative agencies, art-tech startups, or interactive installations.
• A side project, plugin, or developer tool that people actually use.

Why Join Us?

• Real Ownership: On an elite 8-person team, your design decisions are shipped exactly as you made them. No committee approvals, no red tape.
• Unbounded Compute: Leverage top-tier GPU clusters and resources to push the limits of what generative AI can do.
• Elite Collaborative Culture: Work side‑by‑side with world‑class engineers, researchers, and artists in a high-bandwidth, 100% in-person environment in New York.