Design Engineer (Senior / Staff / Principal)

Gym Class VR; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health/Dental/Vision benefits

401k with matching

Job summary

Gym Class is seeking a Founding Design Engineer to own consumer UI across mobile and web in VR. You will ship production code from design ideas, establish design systems, and drive fast iterations that boost engagement, retention, and sharing. The role blends UX design with front-end engineering at a viral consumer startup.

You will work at the intersection of social, gaming, and AI, building scalable interfaces while maintaining high visual quality and performance across platforms.

Qualifications

• 3–6+ years building consumer web products, with a portfolio showing you owned both design + implementation.
• You’ve shipped mainstream UX and you intuit what makes products feel effortless, sticky, and shareable; built/optimized viral loops (invites/referrals, sharing, UGC, social graphs, discovery/feed surfaces).
• Strong front-end: React + TypeScript, modern HTML/CSS (responsive, animation, accessibility); you sweat the details: spacing, typography, motion, micro-interactions.
• Performance-minded: profiling, code-splitting, asset strategy, caching/CDN, keeping bundles lean.
• High-agency: you define the problem, propose the solution, and ship.
• Startup builder: thrive in ambiguity, move fast, raise the bar; ex-founders welcome.

Responsibilities

• Own 0→1 → production: sketch → Figma → production React.
• Build growth-critical surfaces: onboarding, profiles, discovery, social loops, chat, and UX for AI systems across mobile/web/VR.
• Drive the roadmap: identify leverage points, write plans, make calls, deliver with speed and quality.
• Create a system that ships: develop a real design system in Figma + code (components, tokens, patterns).
• Make it feel great: hit performance targets across mobile and VR constraints.
• Close the loop with data: instrument events, run lightweight tests, ship iterations weekly.

Skills

React

TypeScript

HTML/CSS

Design Systems

Performance Optimization

Startup Experience

Tools

Figma

Job description

About the role Role Summary

Gym Class is a top-rated social game on Meta Quest - millions of downloads, 79,000+ reviews, 4.9. We’re backed by a16z and Y Combinator, along with sports partners and investors including the NBA, the Golden State Warriors, and athletes like Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Lonzo Ball, Danny Green, and Zaza Pachulia.

This year we’re taking things to the next level - both scaling in virtual reality, and expanding our social games platform to mobile .

We’re hiring a Founding Design Engineer (a product designer who ships production code) to own our consumer UI across both our upcoming mobile app and the web surfaces inside our flagship VR app. This person loves to move fast from Figma → React , set a high quality bar, and has shipped viral consumer apps - including the product loops that drive retention, engagement, and sharing . They’ve also established early design functions at startups: systems, standards, and processes .

At Gym Class, you’ll join a world-class team that ships quickly (and has built massively viral consumer products before), in a product where your work gets immediate feedback from a highly engaged community - in-game and on TikTok/YouTube - while building at the intersection of consumer social + gaming + AI .

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Own 0→1 → production: Take ambiguous ideas + player feedback and ship polished experiences — sketch → Figma → production React.

Build growth-critical surfaces: Onboarding, identity/profiles, discovery, social loops (invites/sharing), chat, spectating, and UX to drive feedback loops for our AI systems across mobile web + in‑VR web .

Drive the roadmap: Identify highest-leverage problems, write the plan, make the calls, and deliver - balancing speed, craft, and metrics.

Create a system that ships: Build a real design system in Figma + code (components, tokens, patterns) so the product stays consistent as we scale.

Make it feel great: Hit performance targets (startup time, smooth interactions, 60fps feel) across mobile + VR constraints.

Close the loop with data: Instrument events, run lightweight tests, ship iterations weekly, and improve activation, retention, engagement, and sharing .

QUALIFICATIONS - you are…

A true designer-who-codes: 3–6+ years building consumer web products, with a portfolio showing you owned both design + implementation .

Consumer-social native: You’ve shipped mainstream UX and you intuit what makes products feel effortless, sticky, and shareable. Built/optimized viral loops (invites/referrals, sharing, UGC, social graphs, discovery/feed surfaces).

Front-end excellent: Strong in React + TypeScript , modern HTML/CSS (responsive, animation, accessibility). You sweat the details: spacing, typography, motion, micro-interactions.

Performance + quality minded: Comfortable with profiling, code-splitting, asset strategy, caching/CDN, and keeping bundles lean.

High-agency: You don’t wait for perfect specs - you define the problem, propose the solution, and ship.

Startup builder: You thrive in ambiguity, move fast, and raise the bar as you go. Ex-founders VERY much welcome.

Nice to have

Familiarity designing for immersive or game-adjacent products.

Pay and Benefits

Salary ranges may be inclusive of several career levels and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors, including the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and location. Additional benefits for this role include: equity; and medical, dental, and vision benefits; and 401k retirement plan with matching.

About Gym Class Gym Class is a top-rated social VR game on Meta Quest with over +79,000 reviews and a 4.9-star rating. Millions of players join to connect with friends, explore social worlds, and engage in competitive games. The community launched around basketball, and is now expanding rapidly into more categories.

The company's mission is to connect the world by simulating it. To achieve this, Gym Class recently raised over $8M from the world's top technology investors, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Y Combinator, the National Basketball Association, the Golden State Warriors, top NBA players like Kevin Durant, Lonzo Ball, Andre Iguodala, Soma Capital, Founders Inc., Danny Green, Zaza Pachulia, Todd and Rahul's Angel Fund, Balaji Srinivasan, and more. In 2023, the company announced a licensing relationship with the NBA, and in 2025, its licensing relationship with the MLB.