Founding Design Engineer

Lightsage; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Lightsage is seeking a Founding Design Engineer in San Francisco to shape how the product looks and works. You will own both user experience and frontend implementation, moving ideas from concept to production in a hybrid design/engineering role.

You’ll design interfaces for agent analytics, dashboards, and recommendations, build reusable components, and establish Lightsage's design system while collaborating with founders and customers to deliver delightful, data-intensive B2B experiences.

Qualifications

• 2–3+ years of experience in frontend engineering, design engineering, or a similar role, ideally at an early-stage or high-growth software company.
• Strong proficiency in React, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, and modern frontend development frameworks such as Next.js.
• Exceptional visual design and interaction design skills, with a strong eye for typography, spacing, layout, motion, and attention to detail.
• Experience designing and implementing polished, responsive, and performant user interfaces from concept through production.
• Ability to translate Figma designs into high-quality code and independently design interfaces when no mockups exist.
• Experience building reusable components, design systems, and scalable frontend architectures.
• Familiarity with data visualization, dashboards, developer tools, or complex technical workflows.
• Strong understanding of frontend performance, accessibility, responsive design, and cross-browser compatibility.
• Ability to prototype rapidly, iterate based on customer feedback, and balance design quality with engineering constraints.
• High ownership, dependable execution, and comfort operating in an early-stage startup with minimal structure.

Responsibilities

• Designing and building product interfaces and interactive prototypes.
• Developing reusable components and establishing a scalable design system.
• Translating complex data into clear, actionable visual experiences for dashboards and analytics.
• Shaping frontend architecture and performance practices as Lightsage scales.
• Collaborating closely with founders, engineers, and customers to ship high-quality frontend features.

Skills

Frontend engineering

UI/UX design

React

TypeScript

Next.js

Responsive design

Data visualization

Accessibility

Prototyping

Ownership

Tools

Figma

Design systems

Frontend architecture

Job description

Founding Design Engineer

Company Description

Lightsage builds infrastructure for the emerging agent economy, helping organizations track, benchmark, and improve how coding agents discover and use their APIs, CLIs, and MCP integrations. The platform is used by enterprises and high-growth startups to become the default tools recommended by software agents.

Lightsage focuses on agent experience and measurable impact on developer and product adoption, with more information available at lightsage.com. The team also created DevToolArena.com, a public benchmark that ranks developer tools across areas such as authentication, inference, and voice using Claude Code and Codex.

Role Description

As the Founding Design Engineer at Lightsage, you will shape how our product looks, feels, and works. You will work directly with the founders, engineers, and customers to design and build intuitive, beautiful, and performant interfaces that make complex technical workflows simple.

This is a hybrid design and engineering role. You won't just hand off designs to engineers. You'll take ideas from initial concepts and prototypes all the way to production, owning both the user experience and the frontend implementation.

Your day-to-day work will include designing and building product interfaces, creating interactive prototypes, developing reusable components, establishing a scalable design system, and continuously refining the product experience. You'll work across agent analytics, data visualizations, onboarding, dashboards, and customer-facing recommendations, translating complex technical data into clear and actionable experiences.

You'll also play a foundational role in establishing Lightsage's design and frontend standards, making decisions about interaction patterns, component architecture, performance, and visual consistency as the product scales.

We're looking for someone with strong design instincts and exceptional frontend engineering skills. You should care equally about how a product looks and how it works, with the ability to move fluidly between Figma and code.

Previous experience in the agent or AI market is not required. Experience building polished, data-intensive B2B products, developer tools, or analytics platforms is particularly relevant.

Qualifications

• 2–3+ years of experience in frontend engineering, design engineering, or a similar role, ideally at an early-stage or high-growth software company.
• Strong proficiency in React, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, and modern frontend development frameworks such as Next.js.
• Exceptional visual design and interaction design skills, with a strong eye for typography, spacing, layout, motion, and attention to detail.
• Experience designing and implementing polished, responsive, and performant user interfaces from concept through production.
• Ability to translate Figma designs into high-quality code and independently design interfaces when no mockups exist.
• Experience building reusable components, design systems, and scalable frontend architectures.
• Familiarity with data visualization, dashboards, developer tools, or complex technical workflows.
• Strong understanding of frontend performance, accessibility, responsive design, and cross-browser compatibility.
• Ability to prototype rapidly, iterate based on customer feedback, and balance design quality with engineering constraints.
• High ownership, dependable execution, and comfort operating in an early-stage startup with minimal structure.

Please include a link to your portfolio, GitHub, or examples of products and interfaces you've designed and built. We especially value shipped work that demonstrates both your design sensibility and engineering ability.

This is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco, CA, with significant ownership and direct influence over Lightsage's product experience, design system, and frontend architecture.