Design Engineer
White Circle· startup· Internet· Oct 22, 2026 · 5d ago
NY / SF / LA
In office
Full-time
Senior
$160K–$220K est.
6+ years exp
Job description
TL;DR: We’re looking for a Design Engineer to turn complex AI safety workflows into simple, intuitive interfaces used by engineering and research teams every day. You’ll work across design and code: shape flows in Figma, then build them in production with React, TypeScript and our component library. You’ll own the gap between "designed" and "shipped" so that what users get is exactly what was intended, down to the last pixel and transition.
ABOUT WHITE CIRCLE
White Circle whitecircle.ai is an AI Safety company building the safety, reliability, and optimization layer for AI systems. At the core of our platform are policies – simple natural-language rules that define what an AI model should and shouldn’t do. We automatically test, enforce, and continuously improve these policies at scale.
- We’ve recently raised our Series A funding round, taking our total funding to $70M. Our investors include top funds, founders, and senior leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, HuggingFace, Mistral, DeepMind, Datadog, Sentry, and others
- We process over one hundred million API calls every month
- We fine-tune and train our own LLMs so they run faster and cheaper than any open or proprietary model
We’re a small, highly focused team. If you want to work deeply on hard problems, see your work ship to production quickly, and influence how AI safety is actually built – you’re the one we need
WHAT YOU’LL DO
- Design and build product interfaces end to end, from Figma exploration to production-ready React code
- Own our design system in both Figma and code: tokens, components, variants, documentation. Keep the two in sync
- Build and polish UI components with attention to states, edge cases, accessibility, and performance
- Prototype interactions and new flows in code to test ideas with real data before we commit to them
- Craft motion and micro-interactions that make complex workflows feel clear and responsive
- Raise the quality bar of the product: spot UI inconsistencies, fix them yourself, ship
- Work directly with product, engineering, and research. Expect fast iterations and full ownership
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR
- 6+ years of experience in product design, frontend engineering, or design engineering, with a portfolio showing both design and shipped code
- Strong frontend skills: React, TypeScript, modern CSS (Flexbox, Grid, custom properties, container queries)
- Experience building and maintaining design systems in code, e.g. design tokens, component APIs, Storybook or similar
- Deep Figma knowledge: Auto Layout, Components, Variants, Variables, Prototyping
- Experience with motion and animation in code (Framer Motion / Motion, CSS transitions, or similar)
- A track record of designing clear, functional web interfaces, ideally for technical or data-heavy products (dashboards, developer tools, B2B SaaS)
- Solid grasp of accessibility (WCAG, keyboard navigation, ARIA) and responsive design
- Comfort working in a real codebase: Git, code review, working alongside engineers
- You use AI tools daily in your workflow (Cursor, Claude Code, v0, or similar) and know how to get production-quality results out of them
BONUS POINTS
- Experience with Tailwind CSS, Radix UI / shadcn/ui, or other headless component libraries
- Next.js or Vite experience
- Data visualization (D3, Recharts, visx)
- Figma plugin or Figma-to-code pipeline experience (Tokens Studio, Style Dictionary, Code Connect)
- Interest in AI safety, LLMs, or developer tooling
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
- Competitive compensation package, including equity
- Flexible time off
- Health insurance
- Mental health support, including coverage for therapy when you need it
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Learning and development support for courses, conferences, and opportunities to grow your skills
- All the hardware, subscriptions, tools, and services you need
- Team off-sites twice a year: we’ve recently been to the Alps, Saint-Tropez, and Marbella
PROCESS
1. Intro call (25 min)
2. Take-home assignment
3. Interview with Head of Design & Creative and Full-stack Engineer (45 min)
4. Additional interview (depending on the interview process)
Please submit your application in English
Application prep
Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.
Keywords to mirror
aifigmareacttypescriptapidesign systemaccessibilitydesign systemsnext.js
- Platform
- ashby
- Effort
- quick
Benefits
Benefits detected in the listing.
Health Insurance
401(K)