Software Engineer, Design System

Overview

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JOIN US ON OUR MISSION TO BECOME THE #1 RETAIL TRADING PLATFORM IN THE WORLD

Welcome to Ninja Trader. We are an industry-leading trading platform and futures broker providing cutting-edge products and services to empower traders to navigate the world’s leading financial markets with confidence. Ninja Trader serves a wide range of traders with award-winning software and brokerage services.

Since 2003, Ninja Trader has grown to over 2 million users and has become the number one rated futures brokerage worldwide. We continuously evolve with a focus on innovation, real-time support, and a community of traders.

Join us to be part of a movement that aims to redefine possibilities in trading and advocate for our customers.

What you’ll do

We are seeking a highly skilled Design Systems Engineer to design, build, and scale Ninja Trader’s enterprise-grade design system. This role will serve as a core frontend platform across multiple product teams in a regulated, high-availability trading environment. The position includes shaping the long-term evolution of the design systems function, mentoring future contributors, and owning the design system as a shared frontend platform across the organization.

In this role you will

• Own the development, maintenance, and evolution of Ninja Trader’s design system, including UI components, patterns, tokens, and documentation; define system standards, architectural direction, and long-term technical strategy
• Act as the technical authority for how designs translate into production UI; partner with Design while maintaining engineering quality, performance, and maintainability
• Balance consistency, flexibility, velocity, and performance for the broader engineering organization
• Build and maintain a component library using modern frontend technologies; ensure components are accessible, performant, and easy to reuse
• Collaborate with other frontend engineers to support adoption of the design system and improve developer experience
• Provide technical leadership to influence adoption without direct reporting authority
• Design scalable CSS and styling architectures (tokens, theming, variables) to support multiple products and future growth
• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation, examples, and usage guidelines for designers and engineers
• Work with Product, Design, and Engineering leadership to align the design system roadmap with business needs

What you’ll need

• 8+ years of professional experience in frontend engineering, design engineering, or design systems development
• Experience building or leading a design system from early or intermediate stages, including architectural decisions and long-term maintenance
• Strong expertise in modern CSS and styling approaches (CSS-in-JS, CSS Modules, Tailwind, or similar), including theming and design tokens
• Experience translating design tools (e.g., Figma) into high-fidelity, production-ready components
• Strong knowledge of web accessibility standards (WCAG 2.2 AA) and building inclusive, accessible interfaces
• Experience supporting shared systems used by multiple teams or products
• Ability to balance design fidelity, performance, and accessibility in production systems
• Familiarity with modern frontend tooling and workflows (Storybook, Vite/Webpack, Yarn/NPM, testing frameworks)

Compensation

The salary range for this role is $ - $ USD. This position also includes an annual target bonus of 15%. Bonus pay is based on individual performance (50%) and company/team performance (50%).

Salary and bonus earnings are components of the total compensation package. Ninja Trader offers a 401K plan with company matching up to 3.5% of employee contributions. Annual paid time off accrues at 23 days per year plus seven paid holidays.

Location

This role is based in Chicago, IL. There may be remote flexibility for exceptional candidates in certain states:
California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana,…