Founding Design Engineer

Jinba.io; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A pioneering software startup is looking for a design engineer to shape the visual and interactive experience of its platform. The role involves designing and building a complete design system and creating intuitive motion designs. Candidates should be proficient in React/TypeScript and have a strong product design sense. The ideal candidate will thrive in early-stage environments, collaborating closely with engineering to ship features and establish design standards. This is an opportunity to make a significant impact as part of a growing international team.

Qualifications

• Portfolio showing end-to-end ownership in product design.
• Experience building or significantly contributing to a design system.
• Comfort designing complex interfaces and workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design and build the design system: components and documentation.
• Own UI/UX for core product surfaces from concept to implementation.
• Write clean, maintainable frontend code with modern React patterns.

Skills

Product design sense

Motion design ability

Proficient in React/TypeScript

Familiar with component libraries

Understanding of design tokens

Tools

shadcn/ui

Radix

Job description

About the Role

Design engineer who owns the full visual and interactive experience of Jinba's platform. You'll build our design system from the ground up, create motion that makes complex workflows feel intuitive, and ship production code alongside the engineering team. This is a founding design role for someone who wants to shape how enterprise users interact with AI-native software.

Responsibilities

• Design and build Jinba's design system: components, tokens, patterns, and documentation

• Own UI/UX for core product surfaces, from concept through implementation

• Create motion design that guides users through workflow creation and execution

• Write clean, maintainable frontend code (we use shadcn/ui and modern React patterns)

• Collaborate directly with engineering to ship features, not just hand off specs

• Establish design processes and standards as the first dedicated design hire

Requirements

Design Skills

• Strong product design sense with portfolio showing end-to-end ownership

• Experience building or significantly contributing to a design system

• Motion design ability: you understand timing, easing, and how animation communicates state

Technical Ability

• Proficient in React/TypeScript; you ship your own designs

• Familiar with component libraries like shadcn/ui, Radix, or similar

• Understanding of design tokens, CSS architecture, and scalable frontend patterns

Product Context

• Experience with developer tools, no-code platforms, or workflow/automation products

• Comfort designing complex interfaces: canvas editors, drag-and-drop builders, multi-step flows

• Ability to simplify dense functionality without dumbing it down

Strong Signals

• Design engineer or founding designer roles at early-stage startups

• Experience at companies like Figma, Linear, Notion, Retool, Vercel, or similar dev/productivity tools

• Built a design system from scratch at a growing company

• Background combining design and engineering

Mindset

• Generalist: you'd rather own the whole surface than perfect one component forever

• Opinionated but collaborative: you have strong taste and can articulate why

• Early-stage ready: you're excited by ambiguity and building foundations others will use

About Jinba

We help large enterprises build automated workflows using plain English. Unlike traditional no-code tools that bolt a chat agent onto their interface, Jinba is built as a native vibe coding platform from the ground up.

YC W26. International team across SF and Tokyo. Growing fast with major enterprise contracts.