# Founding Design Engineer at Carnot Ai

> Onsite · United States · Unspecified · Software engineering · open. Source: https://alderhq.app/jobs/ashby%3Acarnot-ai%3Af8e9170f-e276-47e8-b7b8-a74e906f0ed3 (read 2026-11-11).

## Facts (observed)

- Company: [Carnot Ai](https://alderhq.app/companies/carnot-ai)
- Location text: San Francisco
- Where it can be done from (inferred): Onsite · United States (evidence: "Location: San Francisco")
- Posted: 2025-12-14 (332 days ago)
- First seen by alder: 2026-11-04 · last verified: 2026-11-10
- Reposted: 0 times · edited: 0 times
- Apply on the employer's site: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/carnot-ai/f8e9170f-e276-47e8-b7b8-a74e906f0ed3
- Skills listed (inferred): TypeScript, React, CSS, Figma

## Pay and sponsorship

- Posted pay: $100k–$250k per year (from the listing's pay field)
- Market band for similar posted roles (SF Bay Area, n 2119): p25 $162k, median $200k, p75 $240k

## Description (the employer's text)

### About the Role

Design engineer who owns the full visual and interactive experience of Jinba's platform. You'll build our design system from the ground up, create motion that makes complex workflows feel intuitive, and ship production code alongside the engineering team. This is a founding design role for someone who wants to shape how enterprise users interact with AI-native software.

### Responsibilities

Design and build Jinba's design system: components, tokens, patterns, and documentation

Own UI/UX for core product surfaces, from concept through implementation

Create motion design that guides users through workflow creation and execution

Write clean, maintainable frontend code (we use shadcn/ui and modern React patterns)

Collaborate directly with engineering to ship features, not just hand off specs

Establish design processes and standards as the first dedicated design hire

### Requirements

### Design Skills

Strong product design sense with portfolio showing end-to-end ownership

Experience building or significantly contributing to a design system

Motion design ability: you understand timing, easing, and how animation communicates state

### Technical Ability

Proficient in React/TypeScript; you ship your own designs

Familiar with component libraries like shadcn/ui, Radix, or similar

Understanding of design tokens, CSS architecture, and scalable frontend patterns

### Product Context

Experience with developer tools, no-code platforms, or workflow/automation products

Comfort designing complex interfaces: canvas editors, drag-and-drop builders, multi-step flows

Ability to simplify dense functionality without dumbing it down

### Strong Signals

Design engineer or founding designer roles at early-stage startups

Experience at companies like Figma, Linear, Notion, Retool, Vercel, or similar dev/productivity tools

Built a design system from scratch at a growing company

Background combining design and engineering

### Mindset

Generalist: you'd rather own the whole surface than perfect one component forever

Opinionated but collaborative: you have strong taste and can articulate why

Early-stage ready: you're excited by ambiguity and building foundations others will use

### About Jinba

We help large enterprises build automated workflows using plain English. Unlike traditional no-code tools that bolt a chat agent onto their interface, Jinba is built as a native vibe coding platform from the ground up.

YC W26. International team across SF and Tokyo. Growing fast with major enterprise contracts.

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Data: alder (https://alderhq.app). Cite https://alderhq.app/jobs/ashby%3Acarnot-ai%3Af8e9170f-e276-47e8-b7b8-a74e906f0ed3 and the date you read it. Observed facts come from the employer's own listing; location reach, level, family and skills are inferences.