The role of a Design Engineer at Circle
About Us
Circle is building the world’s leading all-in-one platform for online communities. We make it possible for creators, coaches, educators, and businesses to bring together their audience with engaging discussions, live streams, events, chat, courses, and payments — all in one place, all under their own brand.
We’re proud to be a fully remote company of around 200 (and growing!) team members from 30+ countries around the world. We seek exceptional individuals around the world, set them up to do the best work of their lives, and in turn, create a meaningful impact in their own lives. We don’t track hours, but we do manage for high expectations very closely. We collaborate across time zones, are highly async, and like to document a lot.
Twice a year, we bring the whole company together in beautiful places around the world for our company offsites. So far, we’ve hosted offsites in Turkey, Portugal, Mexico, Thailand, Colombia, Italy, Ireland, and more, with still more to come!
Check out our Careers page for more about working at Circle.
About the role
We’re looking for a Design Engineer: you’ll work as design engineer and front-end prototyper, paired 1:1 with product designers to turn ideas into working prototypes in hours, not weeks.
Our goal is simple: move from sharing Figma mockups to sharing real, clickable prototypes as our default design artifact.
You’ll bring refined product designs to life—building high-fidelity, functional implementations that bridge design intent and engineering execution. Your work enables faster validation, clearer stakeholder communication, and smoother handoff to engineering, with reusable implementations that raise the quality bar for production builds.
Design owns the output. You’ll iterate with designers until the implementation matches intent, then deploy to preview environments for feedback and review.
This role requires fluency with AI coding tools. We expect you to use tools like Cursor and Claude Code as your primary way of building, generating fast starting points and refining them with care.
What you’ll be doing
- Work daily in tight 1:1 pairing with a product designer, turning Figma concepts into live prototypes in real time
- Build prototypes in the same technologies as our production front-end (React/Next.js/TypeScript/Tailwind) using Cursor and Claude Code
- Translate multi-screen Figma flows into working code, collaborating directly with designers throughout iteration
- Iterate quickly through critique loops—prototypes are the primary artifact we use to communicate product ideas
- Leverage the design system as your foundation—building new components only when necessary
- Deploy to preview environments for async review, feedback, and stakeholder alignment
- Offer input on technical feasibility and complexity as flows are finalized
- Manage multiple workstreams, balancing major implementations with quick iteration or refinement needs
- Collaborate with the product design org while sitting operationally close to the Design Systems and front-end engineering team
What you’ll need to be successful
AI-First Development
- Hands-on experience using AI coding tools (Cursor and Claude Code) as your primary way of building front-end prototypes
- You embrace “vibe coding”: using AI to generate fast starting points, then refining with precision and care
- Comfortable iterating quickly with AI assistance while maintaining high visual and functional quality standards
Technical Foundation
- 3+ years of experience building web interfaces with React, modern JavaScript, and component-based architecture
- Strong experience with React, TypeScript, Next.js, and Tailwind (or very similar modern front-end stack)
- Strong grasp of React fundamentals (functional components, hooks, props/state) and layout systems (Flexbox, Grid)
- Experience working with Tailwind CSS and libraries like Radix, Headless UI, or shadcn/ui
- Comfortable working in a real production-style codebase
- Familiarity with Git workflows and preview deployments (e.g. Vercel)
Design-Engineering Bridge
- Experience translating polished design specs into functional code
- Comfortable navigating complex Figma files—extracting assets, understanding auto-layout and component behavior
- High attention to detail when it comes to visual fidelity, interaction behavior, and polish
- You lean design-side for an engineer: you care about pixels, UX quality, and interaction polish
Working Style & Profile
- Exceptional communication skills—you write clearly, present your work confidently, and collaborate well across disciplines
- Comfortable working both asynchronously and in real-time—sharing progress, giving updates, and contributing to team discussions
- Collaborative and open—you balance design priorities with thoughtful technical input
- You might have started as a web designer or have a strong visual/design background and grew into modern front-end engineering
- You’ve been building small apps, tools, or experiments on your own using modern front-end stacks and AI coding tools
- You’re constantly exploring new libraries, tools, and workflows to move faster and improve quality
Bonus points
- Experience with animation libraries (Framer Motion, CSS transitions)
- Understanding of accessibility fundamentals (semantic HTML, ARIA, keyboard navigation)
- Familiarity with other AI-assisted development workflows and tools
$90,000 – $100,000 USD per year
The cash compensation range shown is a starting point. In addition to equity, benefits and perks, your cash compensation is subject to an annual review and increase on a once per year basis.
The fun stuff
- Fully remote: work from anywhere in the world!
- Autonomy and trust to do your job: we care about outcomes over everything else.
- Paid time away: all employees are given 35 days of PTO annually. We also offer a paid sabbatical after 5 years.
- Generous U.S. benchmarked compensation and startup equity no matter where you are in the world.*
- Awesome medical coverage with 100% coverage for you and your family, or medical reimbursement options where applicable!*
- Parental leave for parents expanding their family, or just starting one.
- Home office stipend to help you get up and running.
- Learning & development stipend to help you level up your professional skills.
- Annual bonus potential for roles that don’t already receive variable income or commission.
- Company retreats: Twice a year, the Circle team gets together for a fully paid company retreat in incredible places around the world! We’ve had past retreats in Colombia, Portugal, and Mexico, with more planned on the horizon.
- Check out our Careers page for more.
*Your role, location and unique circumstance may affect this.
To learn more about Circle visit their website
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