Role: Product Design Engineer — AI Interfaces (Design → React/TypeScript)
Comp: $180K-$220K + Equity
Location: New York or Washington, D.C
About the Company
A Defense Tech client is hiring a Product Design Engineer to own the design language and ship production UI for an agentic-AI platform that serves both non‑technical operators and advanced technical builders.
About the Role
The role pairs high-fidelity visual craft with hands‑on implementation in React and TypeScript and prioritizes accessible, legible interfaces for dense analytical workflows.
Responsibilities
- Create and steward a cross-audience design system and brand architecture that covers tokens, themes, light/dark parity, and shared component primitives, so operator and builder surfaces feel like one platform.
- Prototype and deliver novel AI interaction patterns such as streaming output, tool-call visualizations, citation and confidence surfacing, and agent‑to‑human handoffs.
- Translate product intent into production React and TypeScript, carrying sketches through to shipped features while preserving design fidelity.
- Design and maintain clear information hierarchies for dense analytical surfaces (knowledge graphs, evaluation dashboards, workflow visualizations) so important work is revealed rather than hidden.
- Treat accessibility and inclusive design (WCAG) as a baseline of the system rather than a later cleanup.
Qualifications
- Portfolio showing shipped production work where the candidate owned visual and technical execution.
- Hands‑on experience implementing and maintaining design tokens, theming, and component libraries in React + TypeScript.
- Proven ability to design information hierarchy for complex, dense UIs.
- U.S. citizenship and clearance eligibility.
- Based in the National Capital Region (NCR) or New York City.
Required Skills
- A designer‑engineer who lives at the intersection of visual design and front‑end code, with a portfolio demonstrating both visual expression and technical execution.
- Fluent across the design‑to‑code spectrum and experienced managing tokens, themes, and shared component primitives in a production React and TypeScript codebase.
- Experienced in shaping legibility in dense analytical domains (intelligence, financial, scientific, or developer‑facing products).
- Comfortable prototyping and shipping AI/LLM interface patterns (streaming displays, tool-call visualization, confidence/citation surfacing) and using AI-assisted prototyping where it accelerates delivery.
- Values accessibility and inclusive design as foundational.
Preferred Skills
- Prior work on AI and LLM interfaces: streaming output, tool-call visualization, citation surfacing, confidence indicators.
- Track record of using AI‑assisted tooling to close the gap between high‑fidelity design and production code.
- Experience collaborating with technical teams in high‑consequence or regulated environments.