Design engineer

Spear AI is seeking a talented Design Engineer who can bridge the gap between creative design and technical implementation. The ideal candidate is an experienced designer and front-end engineer who stays current with the latest design trends and is obsessed with polish and making interfaces look beautiful. This role is crucial in creating intuitive, responsive, and visually appealing user experiences for our mission-critical applications.

About Spear AI

Spear AI serves the national security industry and deploys software to cloud environments that span unclassified, Secret, and Top Secret regions. We also deploy software to the edge in some of the harshest conditions, including US nuclear submarines. Our work demands the highest standards of quality, security, and reliability.

US CITIZENSHIP REQUIRED

Some of your responsibilities will include:

• Modify, extend, and document our Design System

• Translate Design Tokens to Figma

• Create components, all the way from the initial design to the shipped React components

• Design and build beautiful marketing pages for our websites and products

• Design and build user-friendly application flows

• Ensure CSS is clean, polished, and works across different device sizes and supported browsers

• Ensure that components and pages are performant (FCP, LCP, etc.)

• Carefully consider edge cases in component designs and application flows

• Create and maintain a design checklist for new components

• Create and maintain component libraries and style guides

• Mentor fellow frontend / full stack engineers on your designs and on design best practices

• Create visual regression tests in Storybook

Design Expertise

• Mastery of modern design principles and systems

• Experience with Figma and other design tools

• Development of design systems and tokens

• Strong understanding of color palettes, typography, iconography, spacing, and theming

• Expertise in responsive design and adaptive layouts

• User experience (UX) and interaction design proficiency

Technical Skills

• Mastery of HTML, CSS, and TypeScript

• Proficiency with Tailwind CSS

• Strong CSS fundamentals (Box Model, Flexbox, Grid, Container queries)

• Understanding of CSS performance optimization

• Experience with React/Next.js frameworks

• Server-side rendering (SSR) implementation

• React Error boundaries and suspense

• Performance optimization strategies

• State management solutions

Testing & Quality Assurance

• Experience with Storybook and visual testing tools

• Knowledge of Core Web Vitals optimization

• WCAG compliance and accessibility expertise

• Visual regression testing

• Cross-browser/platform compatibility testing

• Integration with CI/CD pipelines

Additional Valuable Experience

• Product development for high-converting interfaces

• Content management system integration

• Authentication workflows and user onboarding

• Geospatial data visualization

• Complex UI patterns (sorting, filtering, data tables)

• Internationalization and localization

• SEO optimization

What Sets You Apart

• Opportunity to work on software that directly impacts national security

• Career advancement paths toward specialized design leadership or engineering management

• Collaborative environment working with both technical and non-technical team members

• Chance to solve complex problems in unique deployment environments