Product Prototyper & Front-End Designer

Abaka AI; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Dental

Vision

PTO

Flexible schedule

Job summary

Abaka AI in Mountain View, CA is hiring a Design Technologist to own how our products look, feel, and work, from first sketch to working front-end code. This foundational role sits between design and engineering, and you’ll prototype in code, build our design system, and ship interfaces for web and mobile used by data contributors, annotators, and enterprise customers.

You’ll work directly with engineers and the team lead, with real ownership and a short path from idea to shipped product.

Qualifications

• 1 to 4 years of experience as a design technologist, design engineer, product designer who codes, or front-end engineer with strong design skills, with shipped work you can walk us through.
• A portfolio or code samples showing both design craft and working implementation (live prototypes, shipped UI, or an open-source or personal project).
• Proficiency in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/TypeScript, with hands-on experience in React or a similar component framework.
• Fluency in Figma and rapid prototyping, with the ability to move between design tools and a code editor.
• Strong UX fundamentals: information architecture, interaction design, user flows, and usability.
• Strong visual craft: layout, typography, hierarchy, and attention to detail.
• Clear evidence of systems thinking: reusable components, patterns, or a design system you built or contributed to.
• Ability to explain and defend design decisions to engineers and stakeholders in clear written and spoken English.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end product design and prototyping for web and mobile: discovery, user flows, wireframes, high-fidelity UI, and working prototypes.
• Build functional prototypes and production-quality front-end code (HTML/CSS, TypeScript, React) so ideas can be tested and shipped without waiting on engineering at the start of a project.
• Build our design system from scratch as both design and code: foundations (color, type, spacing, iconography, tokens) and a shared component library used across products.
• Frame problems before solving them: talk to users, study how they work, and challenge requirements when there’s a better answer.
• Design and build workflow-heavy, data-dense interfaces such as annotation tools, review queues, dashboards, and internal platforms.
• Use AI coding and design tools to speed up exploration, prototyping, and implementation, and share what works with the team.
• Partner closely with engineers to ship: align on architecture, review implementation for quality, and contribute directly to the front-end codebase when it helps.
• Use research, usability testing, and product data to validate decisions and keep improving what’s live.
• Help shape how the team works: design reviews, critique, documentation, and the processes a growing product team needs.

Skills

UX fundamentals

Strong visual craft

Systems thinking

English communication

Tools

React

Figma

HTML/CSS

JavaScript/TypeScript

Storybook

Framer Motion

GSAP

Job description

Abaka AI in Mountain View, CA is hiring a Design Technologist to own how our products look, feel, and work, from first sketch to working front-end code. This foundational role sits between design and engineering, and you’ll prototype in code, build our design system, and ship interfaces for web and mobile used by data contributors, annotators, and enterprise customers.

You’ll work directly with engineers and the team lead, with real ownership and a short path from idea to shipped product.