---
title: 'Founding Design Engineer at Jinba.io'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-design-engineer-jinba-io-san-francisco-bbkdpv2jegk3'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Founding Design Engineer at Jinba.io

- **Company:** Jinba.io
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $100k–$250k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-12-14
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/carnot-ai/f8e9170f-e276-47e8-b7b8-a74e906f0ed3

## 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

## REQUIREMENTS

## 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.

## About Jinba.io

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Jinba provides an enterprise AI workflow builder that lets business teams create and deploy production-ready workflows using natural language, with SOC 2 compliance and on-premise deployment options.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Startup, Y Combinator Winter 2026 batch)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, USA (with an office in Tokyo, Japan)
- **Founded**: 2024 (estimated based on YC batch timing)
- **Founders**: Shoya Matsumori (Co-founder and CEO, Ph.D. in machine learning) and Takuya Norisugi (Co-founder and COO, former McKinsey manager)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Enterprise AI Workflow Automation / No-code Development
- **Target customers**: B2B, specifically large enterprises in regulated industries (banking, insurance, financial services) and Fortune Global 500 companies
- **Mission or purpose statement**: Enable enterprises to build AI workflows just by chatting, eliminating the IT backlog and allowing business teams to deploy workflows to production with full compliance controls.

## Products & Services
- **Jinba Flow**: A vibe-coding platform where builders create and deploy workflows using natural language. Workflows can be reviewed and edited visually with flowcharts, integrated with 100+ external services, and published as APIs or batch processes.
- **Jinba App**: The execution environment where users run and interact with deployed workflows. Supports chat-based execution, auto-generated input forms, and MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration for AI agent access.
- **Jinba Toolbox (Beta)**: A centralized tool management and execution platform for AI agents, offering sandbox execution in containers, semver versioning, REST API/SDK/MCP support, and a centralized tool registry.
- **Jinba API**: Enables technical teams to build and deploy custom APIs in minutes without writing code, with 100+ integrations, SSO, RBAC, and audit logs.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — Y Combinator Winter 2026 batch (standard YC deal: ~$125K-$500K); serves 40,000 enterprise users at major financial institutions
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (Winter 2026 batch); SOC 2 compliant; serves Fortune Global 500 companies in banking, insurance, and other highly regulated industries
- **Growth Signals**: 40,000 enterprise users; YC-backed with active hiring across engineering, sales, and design roles; expanding from San Francisco to Tokyo office; targeting highly regulated industries with compliance-first approach

## Competitive Advantages
- **Natural language workflow creation**: Unlike traditional no-code tools with drag-and-drop interfaces, Jinba lets users describe workflows in plain language, significantly reducing build time (promise of "Prompt to API in 5 minutes")
- **Enterprise-grade security from day one**: SOC 2 compliant with end-to-end encryption, SSO, RBAC, audit logging, on-premise or private cloud hosting, and private model hosting — designed specifically for regulated industries
- **Dual product ecosystem**: Jinba Flow for builders and Jinba App for consumers, with MCP integration allowing AI agents to access workflows
- **Targeting regulated industries**: Built specifically for banks, insurers, and compliance-heavy enterprises that competitors like Zapier, Make, and n8n cannot adequately serve due to security gaps

## Strategic Focus
- **Deep enterprise penetration**: Focused on Fortune Global 500 companies in banking, insurance, and regulated sectors
- **Security and compliance leadership**: Emphasizing on-premise deployment, private model hosting, and SOC 2 compliance as core differentiators
- **AI-native workflow automation**: Positioning as "Lovable meets n8n, but built for the enterprise" — combining vibe-coding with production-ready deployment
- **Global expansion**: Hiring across San Francisco and Tokyo offices, suggesting dual-market strategy (US and Japan)

## Why Work Here
- **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

## Sources
1. [jinba.io](https://jinba.io/)
2. [jinba.io/careers](https://jinba.io/careers)
3. [ycombinator.com/companies/jinba](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/jinba)
4. [carnot.mintlify.app](https://carnot.mintlify.app/en/introduction)
5. [jinba.io/api](https://jinba.io/api)

## Other roles at Jinba.io

- [Product Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/product-designer-jinba-io-san-francisco-4w6msjxm2k2e) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Engineer (Growth)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-engineer-growth-jinba-io-san-francisco-mh1wg1y61ayg) — San Francisco, CA
- [Chief of Staff](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-of-staff-jinba-io-san-francisco-psd7excg2eq7) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Frontend Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-frontend-engineer-jinba-io-tokyo-hdmncde2yb6e) — Tokyo, Japan
- [Founding Sales Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-sales-lead-jinba-io-tokyo-pxhsbxegn01f) — Tokyo, Japan
- [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-jinba-io-san-francisco-vsgqka85mm5x) — San Francisco, CA
- [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-jinba-io-tokyo-5jb1hzzpphdc) — Tokyo, Japan
- [Founding Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-engineer-jinba-io-san-francisco-bdssfg0pnv08) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-design-engineer-orchard-robotics-san-francisco-qwk1fmvskkgf) — San Francisco, CA
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