
Founding Design Engineer at Jinba.io (San Francisco, CA)
Jinba.io· San Francisco, CA· $100k–$250k·
Role details
Salary
$100k–$250k
Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time
Equity
Yes
Job description
ABOUT THE ROLE
Design engineer who owns the full visual and interactive experience of Jinba's platform. You'll build our design system from the ground up, create motion that makes complex workflows feel intuitive, and ship production code alongside the engineering team. This is a founding design role for someone who wants to shape how enterprise users interact with AI-native software.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Design and build Jinba's design system: components, tokens, patterns, and documentation
- Own UI/UX for core product surfaces, from concept through implementation
- Create motion design that guides users through workflow creation and execution
- Write clean, maintainable frontend code (we use shadcn/ui and modern React patterns)
- Collaborate directly with engineering to ship features, not just hand off specs
- Establish design processes and standards as the first dedicated design hire
DESIGN SKILLS
- Strong product design sense with portfolio showing end-to-end ownership
- Experience building or significantly contributing to a design system
- Motion design ability: you understand timing, easing, and how animation communicates state
TECHNICAL ABILITY
- Proficient in React/TypeScript; you ship your own designs
- Familiar with component libraries like shadcn/ui, Radix, or similar
- Understanding of design tokens, CSS architecture, and scalable frontend patterns
PRODUCT CONTEXT
- Experience with developer tools, no-code platforms, or workflow/automation products
- Comfort designing complex interfaces: canvas editors, drag-and-drop builders, multi-step flows
- Ability to simplify dense functionality without dumbing it down
STRONG SIGNALS
- Design engineer or founding designer roles at early-stage startups
- Experience at companies like Figma, Linear, Notion, Retool, Vercel, or similar dev/productivity tools
- Built a design system from scratch at a growing company
- Background combining design and engineering
MINDSET
- Generalist: you'd rather own the whole surface than perfect one component forever
- Opinionated but collaborative: you have strong taste and can articulate why
- Early-stage ready: you're excited by ambiguity and building foundations others will use
ABOUT JINBA
We help large enterprises build automated workflows using plain English. Unlike traditional no-code tools that bolt a chat agent onto their interface, Jinba is built as a native vibe coding platform from the ground up.
YC W26. International team across SF and Tokyo. Growing fast with major enterprise contracts.
Why work at Jinba.io
- YC-backed startup: Winter 2026 batch with strong founder backgrounds (Ph.D. in ML, McKinsey) and rapid traction (40,000 users)
- High-impact roles: Open positions include Founding Engineer, Founding Sales Lead, Chief of Staff, Forward Deployed Engineer, and Founding Design Engineer — offering early-stage ownership and equity
- Hybrid/remote flexibility: Roles listed as "On-site" (San Francisco), "Hybrid" (San Francisco and Tokyo), and "Contract Hybrid" — suggesting flexibility depending on role
- Competitive compensation: Salary ranges listed for some roles (e.g., $150K-$250K for Founding Engineer roles)
- Engineering culture: Emphasis on "making something people want" and "building with AI" — strong technical culture with modern stack
- Dual-location optionality: Offices in San Francisco and Tokyo allow for international work opportunities