Staff Design Engineer

campfire; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Premium health coverage

Dental care

Dependent coverage

Job summary

Campfire is seeking a Staff Design Engineer to shape the core ERP experience. This senior IC will own high-impact, cross-cutting design problems, set direction, and partner with engineering and product leadership to ship work that changes how finance teams operate.

You will mentor designers, strengthen the design system, and collaborate with finance customers to ground decisions in real workflows. This role is in-office in San Francisco.

Qualifications

• Own end-to-end design for complex, ambiguous problem spaces across product areas.
• Partnership with product and engineering leads to shape roadmaps and strategy.
• Design for dense, data-heavy workflows (tables, ledgers, reconciliation, reporting).
• Strengthen and evolve Campfire's design system and interaction patterns.
• Mentor other designers and raise the craft bar across the team.
• Talk directly to customers—finance and accounting teams—to ground decisions.
• Drive design reviews and help the team make faster, better-informed decisions.
• 8+ years of product design experience with ownership of high-impact areas.
• Experience in fintech/ERP or similar is a strong plus.
• Able to prototype with HTML/CSS and some JavaScript.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end design for complex, ambiguous problems across product areas.
• Partner with product and engineering to shape roadmap and strategy.
• Design for dense, data-heavy workflows and ensure clarity and speed.
• Evolve the design system and interaction patterns for coherence as the product grows.
• Mentor designers and raise the craft across the team.
• Engage with customers to ground design decisions in real workflows.
• Lead design reviews to enable faster, better-informed decisions.

Skills

End-to-end design

Systems thinking

Data-dense workflows

Portfolio range

Communication skills

Ambiguity handling

Startup experience

Prototype coding (HTML/CSS/JS)

Tools

HTML/CSS

JavaScript

Job description

Please note: This role is in-office in San Francisco at our headquarters working with the entire company five days per week. We are not open to remote candidates.

About Us

Campfire builds modern ERP software for finance teams - bringing accounting, close, and reporting workflows into one fast, intuitive system. We're a small, senior team obsessed with craft, speed, and making complex financial software feel simple to use.

About the Role

We're looking for a Staff Design Engineer to help shape the core experience of Campfire's ERP platform. You'll take on our thorniest, highest-leverage design problems - the ones that touch multiple teams, span complex workflows, and require deep systems thinking. This is a senior individual-contributor role: you'll set design direction, raise the bar for craft across the team, and partner directly with engineering and product leadership to ship work that materially changes how finance teams operate.

You'll have significant ownership over ambiguous, cross-cutting problems (think: reimagining the general ledger experience, or designing a coherent system for how data flows between modules) rather than a single feature area.

We Need Someone Who

• Own end-to-end design for complex, ambiguous problem spaces spanning multiple product areas - from framing the problem to shipping and iterating post-launch

• Partner with product and engineering leads as a peer, shaping roadmap and strategy, not just executing against a spec

• Design for dense, data-heavy workflows (tables, ledgers, reconciliation, reporting) in a way that stays clear and fast to use

• Strengthen and evolve Campfire's design system and interaction patterns so the product feels coherent as it grows

• Mentor other designers, give sharp critique, and raise the craft bar across the team

• Talk directly to customers - finance and accounting teams - to ground design decisions in how they actually work

• Drive design reviews and help the team make faster, better-informed decisions

Ideal Candidate

• 8+ years of product design experience, with a track record of owning complex, high-impact product areas end to end

• Experience designing for data-dense, workflow-heavy software (fintech, ERP, dev tools, B2B SaaS, or similar) is strong plus

• Strong systems thinking - you can zoom out to see how a feature fits the broader product, and zoom in on pixel-level details

• A portfolio that shows range: 0-to-1 work, and rigorous iteration on existing systems

• Excellent communication skills; you can build alignment with engineers, PMs, and executives, and explain design rationale clearly

• Comfort working in ambiguity, with incomplete requirements, and evolving your own scope

• Prior experience at an early- or growth-stage startup, with a bias toward shipping over perfecting in isolation

• Able to code your own prototypes (HTML/CSS and enough JavaScript to build interactive, functional mockups)

Let's Connect

Think you're the perfect fit? We're excited to meet you! Reach out, share your story, and let's explore how you can ignite change at Campfire.

Benefits

We provide top decile benefits including 100% premium coverage for employees and 80% coverage for dependents with comprehensive healthcare and dental care options.