Senior Design Engineer

Github; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 177,000 - 329,000; Full time

Job summary

GitHub is hiring a Design Engineer to shape the next generation of developer tools at scale. You will balance design, engineering, and product strategy while delivering production-ready front-end experiences.

Work alongside designers, engineers, and product managers to prototype, iterate, and ship with a strong emphasis on quality and accessibility. The role emphasizes collaboration, autonomy, and a bias for action in a fast-moving AI-driven environment, with hybrid collaboration and strong

Qualifications

• 7+ years experience in front-end engineering or development
• OR Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Art, CS, HCI, IA, or related field AND 5+ years frontend experience
• OR Master’s Degree in Industrial Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Art, CS, HCI, IA, or related field AND 3+ years frontend experience
• OR Doctorate in Industrial Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Art, CS, HCI, IA, or related field AND 1+ year frontend experience
• Fluency with modern front-end technologies and design/prototyping tools like Figma; experience with AI-powered design/tools
• Hands-on engineering experience with React, CSS, HTML, JavaScript/TypeScript and design systems

Responsibilities

• Front-End Craft & Adaptability: Deliver front-end experiences with high quality and detail
• Exploration & Prototyping: Rapidly prototype interactive concepts and AI-ready design languages
• Systems & Architecture: Support evolving design systems and architecture
• Design Systems Integration: Use design system components for product consistency
• Communication: Collaborate clearly with cross-disciplinary teams
• Accessibility & Craft: Deliver accessible visual and interaction designs
• Shaping: Define great products and developer experiences with intentional defaults
• Brand & Experience: Build interactive experiences reflecting GitHub’s brand
• Progress and tempo: Move forward quickly while balancing quality
• Curiosity: Stay curious about AI and new capabilities
• Design Quality: Partner across product/design/engineering for scalable components

Skills

Front-end engineering

React

HTML

CSS

TypeScript

Figma

AI-powered design tools

Education

Bachelor's in Industrial Design/related field with frontend experience

Master's in Industrial Design/ related field with frontend experience

Doctorate in Industrial Design/ related field with frontend experience

Tools

Design systems

Job description

About GitHub

GitHub is the world’s leading platform for agentic software development — powered by Copilot to build, scale, and deliver secure software. Over 180 million developers, including more than 90% of the Fortune 100 companies, use GitHub to collaborate, and more than 77,000 organisations have adopted GitHub Copilot.

Locations

In this role you can work from San Francisco, California United States

Overview

We're hiring a Design Engineer to help shape the next generation of developer tools used by 200+ million developers around the world. Design Engineers live at the intersection of design, engineering, and product strategy, combining strong technical depth, sharp design sensibility, and the ability to move ideas into production quickly.

In this role, you'll work hands-on with design primitives, open source systems, and emerging front-end technologies. Collaborating closely with designers, engineers, and product managers, you'll prototype, build, iterate, and refine experiences that millions of developers rely on. You'll bring curiosity, strong opinions on quality, and the range to take work from concept through ship.

Design Engineers at GitHub are expert individual contributors with a lot of autonomy and trust. We're looking for someone who builds as a way of thinking — someone who sketches ideas in code, navigates ambiguity with confidence, and drives clarity across teams. This role is ideal for builders excited to elevate how design engineering shapes GitHub and help define the future of developer experience at scale.

Responsibilities

• Front-End Craft & Adaptability: Deliver front-end experiences with a focus on quality and detail, adapting quickly to new technologies and approaches—even when all the answers aren’t clear.
• Exploration & Prototyping: Rapidly explore and prototype interactive concepts, especially around emerging UX patterns and AI-ready design languages, moving fast to test ideas and learn what works. Experiment with design primitives and open source systems.
• Systems & Architecture: Support evolving and scaling design systems, contribute to robust information architecture, and help advance open source initiatives.
• Design Systems Integration: Integrate and use design system components to deliver product consistency and alignment with company standards.
• Communication: Collaborate and communicate clearly with cross-disciplinary teams throughout ideation, design, and development for inclusive and well-understood messaging.
• Accessibility & Craft: Deliver accessible, high-quality visual and interaction designs from concept to completion, ensuring assets, flows, and animations support GitHub’s brand and principles.
• Shaping: Defining great products and developer experiences with a point of view, where good defaults and what not to include is as intentional as essential as what makes it into the final solution.
• Brand & Experience: Build and refine interactive experiences that fully reflect GitHub’s brand vision.
• Progress and tempo: it's easy to get caught up in the meta-design details, so our team must be mindful that we keep making decisions and move forward quickly. We prioritize progress over correctness.
• Curiosity: In a fast-paced environment like AI and LLMs, our designers remain curious and comfortable learning about existing and upcoming new capabilities to identify opportunities.
• Design Quality: Bridge the gap and collaborate with product, design, and engineering to build high-quality, scalable, and interactive components.

Qualifications

Required qualifications:

• 7+ years experience in front-end engineering or development
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Art, Computer Science, Human Factors Engineering, Human Computer Interaction, Information Architecture, or related field AND 5+ years experience in front-end engineering or development
  • OR Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Art, Computer Science, Human Factors Engineering, Human Computer Interaction, Information Architecture, or related field AND 3+ years experience in front-end engineering or development
  • OR Doctorate in Industrial Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Art, Computer Science, Human Factors Engineering, Human Computer Interaction, Information Architecture, or related field AND 1+ year(s) experience in front-end engineering or development
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Fluency with modern front-end technologies and design/prototyping tools like Figma; experience working directly in codebases and working with AI-powered design and development tools and workflows.
• Hands-on engineering experience with modern front-end technologies (e.g., React, CSS, HTML, JavaScript/TypeScript) and design systems.

Preferred qualifications:

• Comfort with a hybrid working model, including regular presence in the GitHub San Francisco office to support team collaboration and connection.
• Experience building AI and agentic experiences
• Experience working with Engineers, Product Managers, and other Designers applying UX principles, and a user-centric approach
• Experience with WCAG compliance and/or implementing accessibility best practices.
• Experience building products for developer tools.

Compensation Range

The base salary range for this job is USD $177,200.00 - USD $329,200.00 /Yr.

These pay ranges are intended to cover roles based across the United States. An individual's base pay depends on various factors including geographical location and review of experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant. At GitHub certain roles are eligible for benefits and additional rewards, including annual bonus and stock. These rewards are allocated based on individual impact in role. In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee's role.

This position will be open for a minimum of 3 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

GitHub values

• Customer-obsessed
• Ship to learn
• Growth mindset
• Own the outcome
• Better together
• Diverse and inclusive

Manager fundamentals

• Model
• Coach
• Care

Leadership principles

• Create clarity
• Generate energy
• Deliver success

Who We Are

GitHub is the world’s leading AI-powered developer platform with 150 million developers and counting. We’re also home to the biggest open-source community on earth (and 99% of the world’s software has open-source code in its DNA). Many of the apps and programs you use every day are built on GitHub.

Our teams are dreamers, doers, and pioneers, leading the way in AI, driving humanitarian efforts around the globe, and even sending open source to Mars (and beyond!).At GitHub, our goal is to create the space you need to do your best work. We’re remote-first and offer competitive pay, generous learning and growth opportunities, and excellent benefits to support you, wherever you are—because we know that people flourish when they can work on their own terms.

Join us, and let’s change the world, together.

EEO Statement

GitHub is made up of people from a wide variety of backgrounds and lifestyles. We embrace diversity and invite applications from people of all walks of life. We don't discriminate against employees or applicants based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other differences. Also, if you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!