Design Engineer

About HASH

At HASH, we're building infrastructure to solve information failure and help everybody make the right decisions. Our open-source platform helps organizations turn fragmented information into typed, temporal knowledge and process graphs that support analysis, simulation, optimization and automation.

We're building towards world models from a different starting point from most AI labs: explicit representations of real systems, the entities within them and the processes through which they change. Our founders include Joel Spolsky, who founded Stack Overflow and Trello;
Jude Allred, formerly CTO of Glitch; and Dei Vilkinsons, formerly CEO of Soho Strategy.

We're hiring a Design Engineer to design and build the interfaces through which people understand and act on complex systems.

This is a hybrid design and engineering role. You will take problems from ambiguity to shipped software: understand the user and underlying system, explore interaction models, establish the visual structure, prototype quickly, test the important assumptions and implement the final experience in production-quality React and Type Script.

HASH is not a conventional CRUD application. Our interfaces need to make dense, changing information understandable: knowledge graphs, process models, timelines, simulations, provenance, uncertainty, AI actions and collaborative edits. The challenge is not simply to make those systems look attractive. It is to find interaction paradigms that let people inspect them, manipulate them and develop an accurate mental model of what is happening.

From time to time, you'll also work on HASH's digital brand expression. That may include building a product launch page, an interactive explanation of a technical idea, a polished demo, a new website section or a reusable visual component that works across product and marketing. You should care equally about the quality of a workflow used every day and the first few seconds in which someone encounters HASH.

The balance will usually be weighted towards product work-roughly two-thirds product and one-third brand/web but will vary according to what is most important. You will work directly with product designers, engineers, researchers, customer-facing colleagues and HASH's founder. As our design and marketing teams grow, you will help define the systems and standards through which their work becomes real.

This is not a conventional design role in which finished Figma files are handed to an engineering team. You should want to own the implementation. It is also not a conventional frontend role in which somebody else has already decided what to build. Your design judgment is the reason for the role.

• A visual portfolio showing exceptional product and interaction design, including substantial work that you personally implemented
• Strong visual craft across typography, layout, spacing, hierarchy, color, states and motion
• Production-level ability with React, Type Script, HTML and modern CSS
• Experience designing and building responsive, accessible interfaces from rough requirements rather than detailed specifications
• The ability to reduce a complicated domain or workflow to a clear interaction model without hiding important truth
• Strong prototyping instincts: you know when to sketch, use Figma, build a throwaway coded prototype or work directly in the production codebase
• Experience creating or extending design systems, component libraries and reusable interaction patterns
• Comfort moving between product UX, frontend architecture and brand/communication design without treating any of them as someone else's problem
• The ability to work closely with engineers on data models, APIs, state, performance and technical constraints
• High agency, pace and attention to detail; you notice weak decisions and unfinished edges and take responsibility for resolving them
• Excellent written and spoken English and the ability to explain the reasoning behind your work clearly

You do not need a particular degree, and we do not care whether you began your career in design or engineering. We care whether you have developed both sets of capabilities to a genuinely high level.

Experience with data visualization, graph interfaces, diagramming tools, multiplayer applications, developer tools, AI products, simulation software or other information-dense systems is particularly relevant. So is experience with SVG, Canvas, WebGL, animation, creative coding, design tokens, Storybook, Next.js or open-source software.

• Design and implement solutions end-to-end: from UX wires and experimentation, through to in-app delivery and interaction design polish
• Work with users, customer-facing colleagues and product teams to understand workflows, failure modes and real constraints
• Design and build interfaces for knowledge graphs, process models, simulations, AI-assisted workflows and complex operational data
• Develop clear ways to navigate entities, relationships, state changes, provenance, uncertainty…