Senior Product Design Engineer

Cal.com; United States; Remote; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully remote & async work

No standups or micromanagement

30 paid OOO days per year

Yearly team retreats

Equity included

Job summary

Cal.com is seeking a Senior Product Design Engineer to own core product surfaces from sketch to production-grade browser components. You’ll craft and engineer design primitives, ensuring real semantics and production readiness, not just polished visuals.

You will contribute to the open-source coss ui, collaborate with product engineers, and push for library-wide improvements while maintaining accessibility, motion, and semantic correctness across surfaces.

Qualifications

• Product designer who evolved into design engineering and owns complex product areas from framing to launch and iteration.
• Strong craft and the ability to ship, with HTML/CSS/TS/React providing executable work.
• Experience building design-engineered components rather than relying on third-party libraries.

Responsibilities

• Own core product surfaces from concept through production-ready components.
• Build and test working prototypes in code with modern tooling.
• Hand off primitives for direct use by product engineers with correct semantics and states.
• Design, build, and own your own components, tightening primitives within the library.

Skills

HTML

CSS

TypeScript

React

Design engineering

Tools

Base UI

Radix

coss ui

Job description

About Cal.com

Cal.com is building the open scheduling infrastructure for the world. We help individuals, teams, and enterprises book time without friction, used by companies like Deel, Notion, Framer, and AngelList.

We’re a remote-first, async-focused team working across 10+ time zones. We prioritize autonomy, transparency, and building scalable systems for both our users and our team.

About the Role

We’re hiring a Senior Product Design Engineer to own core product surfaces end to end, from the first sketch to production-grade components running in the browser.

You’re a product designer at your core. The craft, the judgment, the taste, the decisions about what we build and why: that’s the foundation. But you’ve evolved well beyond it. Over the years you’ve grown your skillset substantially into design engineering, and today code is where you do your best design work. We care far less about your design files than about what you can build.

What you build gets handed off. That’s exactly why it has to be built right: real semantics, real keyboard paths, composed from our actual primitives, close enough to production that a product engineer picks it up and uses it as is. A component that cheats is a component that lies about the design.

You build and own your own components. Rather than reaching for whatever third-party library is trending, you design and engineer beautiful, well-considered primitives yourself, and you know them inside out.

We build on coss ui, our open-source component library built on Base UI. That’s settled. It’s our foundation and it isn’t changing. What isn’t settled is how good it gets. We want someone who treats the design system as a product in its own right: finding the gaps, tightening the primitives, pushing new patterns back into the library instead of solving the same problem locally for the fifth time.

What You’ll Do

• Own core product surfaces from concept through production-ready components: booking flows, scheduling primitives, team and enterprise surfaces
• Build and test working prototypes in code with whatever answers the question fastest: Claude Code, Cursor, v0
• Hand off primitives that product engineers use directly across Cal.com’ s product surfaces, with correct semantics, real states, and no shortcuts that fall apart in production
• Design, build, and own your own components instead of relying on third-party, publicly available ones
• Continually improve coss ui: audit what exists, close the gaps, refine the primitives, and land new components in the library rather than one-off in the app
• Keep the system honest: tokens, spacing, states, dark mode, motion. Every new surface should make the library better, not route around it
• Apply motion with intent. Know when animation clarifies and when it gets in the way, and have the restraint not to animate when it doesn’t earn its place
• Own the outcome, not just the artifact. Frame the hypothesis, define what success looks like, stay with it through implementation, and read the results
• Hold the accessibility bar: keyboard paths, focus management, semantics, contrast, motion preferences. Non-negotiable, not a QA pass at the end
• Sweat the last 10%. Empty states, error copy, loading behavior, motion: the details that separate a good product from one people love
• Work in the open with the Head of Product and Design Engineer. Share early, invite the critique, and let other people’s constraints change your design
• Write your thinking down. Async means the doc, the Loom, and the prototype are the meeting

What We’re Looking For

• A product designer at your core who has evolved substantially into design engineering. You’ve owned complex, ambiguous product areas from problem framing through launch and iteration
• Exceptional craft, and the engineering ability to ship it. HTML, CSS, TypeScript, React: you don’t need an engineer to make an idea real
• You build and own your own beautiful, design-engineered components rather than relying on third-party libraries
• Deep expertise in headless primitive composition (Base UI, Radix, or similar). This is one of the strongest signals we’re looking for. Direct coss ui or Base UI experience is a strong plus
• A strong grasp of motion design principles in UI: easing, timing, choreography, and above all the judgment to know when to animate and when not to
• You work in the AI tooling daily (Claude Code, Cursor, v0)
• Deep familiarity with web standards and platform primitives. You know what the browser already does before you reach for a library
• Real design systems experience. You’ve built and maintained one, not just consumed one. You know the difference between a component and a primitive, and when a pattern has earned its place in the library
• Real accessibility knowledge: WCAG, ARIA, assistive tech, and the judgment to know when the spec isn’t enough
• You understand the architecture of what you’re designing: APIs, data models, state, and the constraints they impose
• Collaborative by default. You show unfinished work, take critique well, and give it directly. Strong opinions, genuinely held loosely
• Strong written communication (clarity > formality)
• High trust, high autonomy mindset. Thrives async, without going quiet

Bonus Skills

• Open-source contributions and publicly available side projects we can view
• Familiarity with Cal.com, scheduling, calendaring, or the mess of timezones and recurrence rules
• Working knowledge of locale- and time-aware APIs like Intl.DateTimeFormat

Compensation

$100,000 – $150,000, same salary regardless of where you live. Equity included.

Why Work at Cal.com?

We’re building Cal.com not just as a product, but as a place to do great work and live a good life.

• Work from anywhere, anytime: fully remote & async
• Earn the same salary no matter where you live
• No standups, no micromanagement, no unnecessary calls
• Real flexibility: take time for life stuff, no approval needed
• Work in your own flow, pajamas welcome
• 30 paid OOO days per year (wherever you are in the world)
• Yearly team retreats in beautiful locations
• People-first culture: stable, family-friendly, kind

What Our Team Says

At this company, I’m actually treated like a real person with ideas and a life, not just another number in the system. It’s refreshing to work somewhere that gets that happy humans do better work.

Sean Brydon, Software Developer

Working at Cal has been a completely different experience from other jobs I’ve had. There’s real trust here. I’ve been able to take ownership of my work without being micromanaged. I started in support and quickly moved into a growth role because initiative is genuinely rewarded. Everyone communicates openly, and feedback is always encouraged. The async, remote culture has been a game-changer for me. I can structure my day around life: run errands and take breaks without the pressure of always being online. It’s all about getting the work done. As a dad of two, that flexibility means everything. If I need to step away for my family, I can. That kind of trust and support motivates me to do my best work every day.

Milos Puac, Enterprise Triage Manager