Founding Design Engineer: Ship UI & Design System

Hirekya; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive cash & equity compensation

Health & dental insurance

Lunch & dinner

In-person energy

Job summary

Kya in New York is seeking a founding Design Engineer who will live between design and frontend, turning rough ideas into interfaces people love to use and shipping them yourself.

You'll define interaction patterns for human-agent collaboration, set the craft bar for the team, and work directly with the founders to move from idea to shipped UI in days while building a product that scales with growth.

Qualifications

• Experience turning rough ideas into shipped UI.
• Strong frontend skills with React/TypeScript.
• Attention to detail in motion and performance.

Responsibilities

• Design and build product end to end from interaction and visual design through to production frontend code.
• Invent the patterns for human and agent collaboration: how work gets surfaced, reviewed, approved, and handed back.
• Build and own the design system and component library so the product stays fast, consistent, and beautiful as it grows.
• Prototype quickly to pressure-test ideas, then turn the ones that work into polished, shipped features.
• Care about the details that matter: motion, latency, empty states, and the small moments that make software feel alive.
• Use Kya to build Kya, and turn what you learn into a better product.

Skills

React

TypeScript

Modern CSS

Frontend performance

Job description

Kya in New York is seeking a founding Design Engineer who will live between design and frontend, turning rough ideas into interfaces people love to use and shipping them yourself.

You'll define interaction patterns for human-agent collaboration, set the craft bar for the team, and work directly with the founders to move from idea to shipped UI in days while building a product that scales with growth.