Lead Design Engineer

Descript

Lead Design Engineer creating interactive components for a video editing app at Descript. Collaborating with product designers and mentoring teams on hybrid design workflows.

Posted 6/29/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $247,000 - $280,000 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Be the primary force behind the codebase with design support in Figma. You’ll build, maintain, document, and evolve shared components, tokens, and patterns
Design highly interactive components and translate design specs into production-quality code with precise attention to spacing, color, typography, motion, and interaction behavior
Partner with product designers to close the gap between what’s in Figma and what ships. Attend crits. Give feedback. Help them think through edge cases or technical realities
Review designer PRs that touch shared UI surfaces and design system contributions from feature engineers
Move the accessibility of our product forward through direct contributions to the product and as a resource to teams
Unblock product squads by giving them components that are flexible enough to use without forking and opinionated enough to enforce consistency
Maintain and improve design system documentation so engineers and designers can self-serve without pinging you for every variant
Contribute to the evolution our ways of working so everyone can build on vibes while staying true to our system and standards

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years building products in some capacity as long both design and engineering are in there somewhere.
A way to help us understand your technical skill and design taste as part of your application.
Experience building or maintaining a product design system at production scale — tokens, component APIs, versioning, migration paths, documentation
High-polish front-end skills that include motion
Fluent in Figma. It may not be your first choice for building, but you can create the resources designers need in there
Clear communication across media. You know a design system’s job isn’t done until its consumers know how to use it.

Benefits

Comp & perks

generous healthcare package
401k matching program
catered lunches
flexible vacation time

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

Component APIsVersioningDocumentationMotion DesignDesign Tokens

Soft Skills

CollaborationFeedback DeliveryProblem Solving