Design Engineer

About Matter

We help consumer brands shift from workflow automation to agent management. Matter is the AI coordination layer for marketing teams — providing shared memory, centralized control, and model orchestration across their stack. We are building this company on a decade of hands-on experience serving 300+ consumer brands. Now we're designing the interfaces that define how marketers work with AI.

We're looking for a Design Engineer to own the central experience of how marketers interact with our platform. This is equal parts design taste and engineering execution. You ll shape what it feels like to manage AI agents, configure workflows, and navigate a product that s inventing new patterns in real time.

You'll report directly to the CEO — a designer by background — and work with a tight team of technologists who ship daily and iterate fast.

• Own the core product experience end-to-end: interaction design, polish, performance, and stability.
• Move fluidly from concept → Figma/Cursor → browser prototype → production, often in the same day.
• Design and build motion-rich, responsive interfaces with expert-level CSS and deep attention to how things feel.
• Architect front-end state that scales — balancing local, global, and server state across complex, real-time interactions.
• Shape how people work with software in the age of agents — you ll define new patterns, not just implement existing ones.
• Collaborate directly with the CEO to translate ambiguous product ideas into shipped features.
• Build and evolve our design system through hands-on prototyping and experimentation.
• Use AI tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) as force multipliers to move faster and push quality higher.

• Founding engineer equity — meaningful stake, early-stage, undiluted.
• Product ownership — ship production code daily. Steer key product and technical decisions.
• Shape the culture — influence how we work: tools, processes, standards, hiring.
• Work with real customers — talk directly to CEOs, CMOs, and VPs of fast-growing consumer brands doing $80M–$500M in revenue.
• Work with a designer-CEO — you ll collaborate closely with someone who understands craft and cares about the details.

This role is not for you if …

• You need stable, long-term roadmaps. Our priorities shift in 24–48 hour cycles.
• You're not comfortable owning problems end-to-end with minimal support.
• You want clear separation between work and life. This is a high-intensity, high-ownership role.

• Proven experience as a design engineer or front-end engineer with strong design ownership — demonstrated through shipped, production-quality work.
• Deep proficiency in the modern web stack (Type Script, React, shadcn, Tailwind, CSS-in-JS) with expert-level CSS and strong intuition for layout, motion, and rendering.
• Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous ideas and turn them into clear interaction models and polished experiences.
• Strong command of front-end state management — how to structure, scope, and evolve state as complexity grows.
• Comfort working between Figma, Cursor/Claude Code and the browser as primary tools for exploration.
• High personal bar for quality, clarity, and correctness.

• Prior experience as a founder or early-stage startup employee.
• Experience with AI-powered products or automation tools.
• Experience with consumer marketing teams.
• Familiarity with performance optimization (RES, FCP, LCP).
• Experience with complex CSS animations and view transitions.

We view code as a tool for solving customer problems, so we keep our stack simple:

• Next.js frontend
• Node backend
• Type Script everywhere
• Postgres + Redis
• LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic, and fine-tuned open source models
• Design-to-code:
  Figma/Cursor → Tailwind CSS → shadcn/ui + Radix primitives

• Ship from day one. No long onboarding. You ll contribute to active codebases immediately.
• Build momentum early. Small, incremental PRs daily to establish rhythm.
• Improve the foundation. Review our architecture with fresh eyes — we want your honest feedback.
• Shape what s next. Collaborate with the CEO on longer-term product bets.
• Learn the customer. Immerse yourself in our industry through direct conversations and guidance from the team.

We use Slack for communication and Linear for PRDs. We "shape" before we build — design, frontend, and backend huddle to scope what s achievable in a fixed timeframe (1 week, 3 weeks, 6 weeks). Then we move fast.

Matter is an equal opportunity workplace—we are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

Compensation Range: $180K - $220K