Design Technologist

Ursus, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 124,000 - 138,000; Full time

Job summary

Ursus, Inc. is seeking a contract Design Technologist to bridge design and production, focusing on Protokit and AI-powered tooling to speed research, prototyping, and shipping high-quality UX in code.

This remote, six-month engagement emphasizes building reusable skills, agents, and guardrails, collaborating with Design, Product, and Engineering to implement design-system integration and tooling.

Job description

JOB TITLE: Design Technologist
LOCATION: Remote
DURATION: 6 months
RATE RANGE: $90-$100/hr

POSITION SUMMARY

Our client is looking for a contract Design Technologist to build the agentic design harness that connects design to production: the skills, agents, automations, and workflows designers use to research, prototype, and ship high quality UX in code.

As a Design Technologist contractor at our client, you will build the connective tissue between design and engineering. You will initially take Protokit — our internal Claude Code–based prototyping toolkit — from a designer-built kit to a production-grade tool that runs on our Design System integration engineering is building, and develop AI-powered tooling that enables designers to research, collaborate, automate repetitive work, and ship code through the path Design Systems engineering is building. This is a high-leverage builder contract that blends design and engineering: you will spend most of your time in code, building for designers. Your impact will be measured by how much faster and more effectively the broader Design team can work.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Architect and build the agentic design harness: the shared foundation of skills, agents, context, and guardrails that designers and product managers use in Claude Code and Claude Design to research, prototype, and ship.
• Connect the harness to the paved road Design Systems engineering is building for designers to ship code, so a prototype can become a pull request with the right components, tokens, and guardrails — and feed designer needs back into that work.
• Partner with engineers to improve the connection between design intent and implementation reality.
• Make our Design System guidance and our client's design context available in the environments designers work in — Claude Code and Claude Design first — while keeping the harness portable as tools evolve
• Create reusable skills, agents, automations, and context that helps the Design organization reduce repetitive work, and increase leverage.
• Contribute Design's slice of our client's shared context layer — design principles, content design standards, usage guidance — working with the Ops team that owns the layer, so agents apply it by default
• Create guardrails that help AI-assisted design and development produce accessible, consistent, and on-system output.
• Partner with Design Systems engineers to make the design system agent-friendly.
• Create documentation, enablement sessions, and other resources that help designers work confidently with the design harness.
• Enable designers across the team to adopt new tools, workflows, and AI capabilities effectively.
• Bring clarity to ambiguous problems and drive action across Design, Product, Engineering, and EPD.
• Help evolve how our client’s design organization works, collaborates, prototypes, and ships.
• Contribute to the broader Design organization by sharing best practices and raising the technical and craft bar.
• Work AI-natively, using AI tools throughout the design and development process

QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience as a design engineer, UX engineer, design technologist, or in a similar hybrid design and technology role, or a designer with very strong development skills.
• Strong understanding of the end-to-end product design process and the realities of designing products in a scaled organization.
• Experience building tools, systems, workflows, or infrastructure used by other designers, product managers, or engineers.
• A track record of working effectively across design and engineering, with the ability to translate design intent into high-quality, maintainable code.
• Experience working with modern AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, or similar products.
• Experience building agentic systems, not just using them: skills, agents, tool and MCP integrations, context and memory systems, and the guardrails and evaluations that keep them reliable.
• Strong systems thinking, with the ability to design tooling that integrates into broader Product, Engineering, and EPD workflows.
• Experience building on top of a design system or component library — consuming its components and tokens in tooling or prototypes — and working closely with the team that maintains it.
• Familiarity with design tokens and token-driven styling systems.
• Hands-on, production-level fluency in React and TypeScript, in Tailwind, and token-driven theming. Comfortable with the tooling around them: Storybook and Chromatic, lint-based guardrails, GitHub CI, and Vercel deploys. This role writes and ships code: you will deliver Protokit's harness — its skills, agents, context, guardrails, and automations — and its build and deploy pipeline. The integration Protokit runs on is owned by Design Systems engineering; you'll build on it, not build it.
• Strong product and design judgment, with a high bar for interaction design, visual quality, accessibility, consistency, and usability.
• A genuine interest in toolmaking and in creating systems that help other people do their best work.
• Comfortable operating independently, making decisions with incomplete information, and moving quickly from idea to implementation
• Ability to build credibility and influence across Design, Product, Engineering, and senior EPD leadership.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to designers and design concepts to engineers.
• Experience enabling or mentoring designers who are learning to work with code, automation, or AI tools.
• A strong commitment to our client’s principles: putting customers first, biasing for action, winning as one team, deciding with frameworks, leading with resilience, and doing what it says on the tin.
• Open to using AI to amplify your skills and strengthen your work, demonstrating curiosity, a willingness to learn, and sound judgment in applying AI responsibly to improve efficiency and impact.
• Responsible for protecting our client and customer data in how you operate and deliver results.
• Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for current or future employer sponsorship.

BENEFITS SUMMARY

Individual compensation is determined by skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Compensation details listed in this posting reflect the base hourly rate or annual salary only, unless otherwise stated.

In addition to base compensation, full-time roles are eligible for Medical, Dental, Vision, Commuter and 401K benefits with company matching.

FAIR CHANCE POLICY

Pursuant to the California Fair Chance Act, Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, and San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, qualified applicants will be considered for assignment with arrest and conviction records. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness, meet client expectations, standards, and accompanying requirements, and safeguard business operations and company reputation.