Senior/Staff Design Engineer

Fine Tune; United States; Remote; USD 130,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Fine Tune is seeking a Senior/Staff Design Engineer to design and build front-end features in Rails using Hotwire, Stimulus, Tailwind, and DaisyUI. You will own the design system in code and define patterns used by engineers, while collaborating with product on direction.

You will review work for accessibility and performance, push the craft forward, and mentor others as needed. This is a fully remote, senior IC role.

Qualifications

• 5+ years designing and building product software with production front-end code.
• Strong HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; browser debugging skills.
• Familiar with server-rendered web apps; Rails view code experience a plus.
• Demonstrated ability to design and own a design system in code.
• Excellent communication and cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Design and build features end-to-end in Rails with Hotwire, Stimulus, Tailwind, and DaisyUI.
• Own code through release, including tests, accessibility, performance, and bug fixes.
• Build and maintain the design system as code: tokens, theming, reusable components.
• Prototype in code when it speeds decision-making; minimize JS where not needed.
• Establish patterns for AI-powered features and governance around them.
• Review front-end pull requests for correctness and accessibility; mentor peers.
• Lead design direction and interaction patterns across products.
• Collaborate with product and leadership to align design with business goals.
• Shape new work, assess scope, and de-risk proposals with evidence.
• Drive priorities and roadmap with credible design judgment.

Skills

HTML

CSS

JavaScript

Git & PRs

UI Design

Design Systems

Code Review

Communication

Accessibility WCAG

Figma

AI tools

Tools

Rails

Hotwire

Stimulus

Tailwind

DaisyUI

Ruby

Job description

We’re looking for a Senior/Staff Design Engineer to design and build the front end of our products. You’ll work in our codebase every day, in Rails views with Hotwire, Stimulus, and Tailwind, taking work from first sketch to production and owning the code you ship. What’s designed is what ships, because you built it.

This is a senior individual-contributor role. Beyond your own features, you’ll own our design system in code, set the patterns other engineers build on, review front-end work, and set design direction for our products alongside product. Our users are the auditors and operators on our internal team who serve procurement and finance teams at major global companies, and the software they rely on lives for a long time. Depth in our domain is part of the job here. The best design decisions come from understanding how their work actually gets done.

At Fine Tune, our core values of honesty, dedication, and vigilance foster an environment of trust, open communication, and inclusivity where everyone can do their best work. If you care about your craft, want to keep getting better, and thrive in a team that’s building something meaningful — let’s talk.

Our interview process includes a hands-on technical pairing session, where we’ll work in code together and talk through product decisions as we go.

This is a full-time, salaried, remote position. Candidates must be US citizens and located in the United States.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Design & Build:
  
  • Design and build features end to end in Rails with Hotwire, Stimulus, Tailwind, and DaisyUI, from first sketch to production
  • Own your code through release, including tests, accessibility, performance, and the bugs that come back
  • Build and maintain the design system as code: tokens, theming, reusable components, and the guidance engineers follow without a designer in the room
  • Prototype in code when it answers the question faster than a mockup
  • Reach for JavaScript only where it earns its keep
  • Build interfaces that hold up at real data volume: large tables, dense forms, long-running jobs
  • Establish patterns for AI-powered features, such as confidence, human review, and correction
• Raise the Bar:
  • Review front-end pull requests for correctness, accessibility, and fit, and explain precisely what’s wrong when it is
  • Raise engineers’ design judgment through pairing, review, and example
  • Lead design critique, audit products for accessibility and usability debt, and prioritize the fixes
  • Lead tool evaluation and adoption for how the team designs and builds
• Set Direction & Shape the Work:
  • Own the design direction and interaction patterns for our products
  • Resolve the tension between purpose-built workflows and general-purpose surfaces across products
  • Lead discovery alongside product management, and frame ambiguous problems as answerable questions
  • Shape new work before it’s committed to, naming design risks and what’s explicitly out of scope
  • Weigh approaches against the time available, and know when to cut scope and when to escalate
  • Use research and prototypes to de-risk new work, and know when there’s enough evidence to move on
  • Coach business stakeholders to build and vet their own prototypes, including with AI-assisted tools
• Partner with product and leadership to align design direction with product and business goals
• Translate design tradeoffs into terms non-designers can act on
• Improve design workflows and handoff across concurrent product teams
• Influence priorities and the roadmap with credible, trusted design judgment grounded in evidence

What We’re Looking For

• Craft
  • 5+ years designing and building product software, with substantial time shipping production front-end code
  • Strong HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; comfortable debugging in the browser and reading unfamiliar code
  • Comfortable in a server-rendered web app: writing view code, and working with controllers and models enough to wire up a feature (Ruby is a plus)
  • Day-to-day fluency with Git, pull requests, code review, and writing tests for your UI
  • A portfolio that shows both design and code: shipped work, repos, or a walkthrough of something you built
  • Experience building or owning a design system in code
  • A track record of setting design direction for complex, data-dense B2B or operational software
  • Experience leading discovery and research alongside product management
  • Deep working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG) and how to design and build to them
  • Proficient with Figma, and fluent prototyping in code and with AI-assisted tools
• Domain
  • Deep understanding of the business your product serves, or a clear track record of building that understanding quickly
  • Able to bring domain reasoning into design direction, not just requirements conversations
• Professional Skills
  • Exceptional communicator — you present complex information clearly and facilitate alignment across groups
  • A force multiplier — you drive cross-team collaboration and build strong relationships organization-wide
  • Handles the most complex problems and establishes problem-solving approaches others adopt
  • Takes ownership well beyond your immediate role and drives initiatives to completion
  • Leads across teams without authority and influences significant product decisions
  • Models the professionalism, judgment, and accountability you want to see in the team

Nice to Have

• Prior production work in Rails with Hotwire and Stimulus
• Tailwind CSS and DaisyUI
• Experience working in fixed-time, variable-scope product cycles
• Designing AI-powered features, such as review and correction of machine-extracted data
• Experience as the first or only designer on a product team
• Exposure to enterprise software, procurement, or finance operations domains

Why Join

Build What You Design: Design and ship the product yourself, and set the direction and system the team builds on — high-leverage IC work without being pushed into management

Growth Path: We invest in your development with clear career progression, regular feedback cycles, and a rubric-based framework so you always know where you stand and where you’re headed

Learning Culture: Book clubs, mentoring programs, and a team that values continuous improvement — we believe in “Learn One, Do One, Teach One”

Collaborative Team: Work with a tight-knit engineering team that values quality, open communication, and professional growth in an inclusive environment

Meaningful Impact: Your work directly helps remove the tedious, complex work that bogs down procurement and finance teams at major global companies

Healthy Balance: Remote flexibility with respect for work-life balance — we believe sustainable work leads to better outcomes

The pay range for this role is: 130,000 – 200,000 USD per year (Remote (United States))

Fine Tune’s cost reduction consultants help clients optimize their most complex and burdensome indirect services, delivering lasting P&L impact and sustainable solutions.