Design Engineer

Job description

ABOUT POSH We are all social creatures, but the dominant “social” companies today have evolved into digital loneliness machines, driving isolation, anxiety, and mental health challenges around the world. Human connection is lost. Posh is a beacon guiding us back. Posh enables anyone to build an IRL community based on shared interests, while connecting consumers with the communities of people just like them. Founded by event organizers who were frustrated with the growing loneliness epidemic and the tools available to build their own event brand, we’ve built the ultimate platform for launching, monetizing, and finding IRL communities of people just like you. In just 6 years, Posh has grown to a team of 70, expanded to 8M+ users, secured $70m in venture funding, and facilitated over $350M in transactions. ABOUT THE ROLE The bar for consumer software not "it works" — it's "it feels alive." Reaching that bar requires people who can hold design and code quality as mutual priorities. As a Design Engineer at Posh, you'll work across both our React Native event discovery app and the React web tools that power IRL creator businesses — you will be the seam between Product, Design, and Engineering anchored on our platform team. Owning the craft of what we ship to millions of people finding and creating IRL communities around the world. This role is different from any traditional engineering role, perfect for someone who began their career as a product designer, moved into frontend/product engineering roles, and has been looking for a way to marry both their skillsets in a position that blurs the lines between design and code to bring visionary ideas to life like never before. The ideal candidate is a tastemaker who’s passionate about adding magical moments to core user flows while empowering the entire engineering team with frameworks and tools that inject design-first orientation into every new product iteration we make. This is an in-person position at our NYC office, located in SoHo. WHAT YOU'LL OWN - Blur the lines between design and production code: Collaborate with product, design, and engineering to narrow the gap between interactive Figma prototypes and production-ready code — first through execution, then through process & tool enablement. - Bridge the gap between design and engineering priorities: Improve ****design system usability while optimizing responsiveness and motion until every new release feels delightful. - Own delight as a deliverable: Integrate yourself deeply into the design review process, adding micro-interactions that define best-in-class consumer products to upcoming product improvements while enabling the rest of engineering to easily prioritize delight as a core aspect of our definition of “done”. - Evolve our design system: Collaborate with design to maintain and grow the components, primitives, and tokens shared across mobile and web. Make it extremely simple for every other engineer to create beautiful experiences without bloating project scope. - Prototype with code: Use code as a thinking tool. Build working prototypes that resolve product debates faster than mockups can, and put real interactions in front of team members and users to inform eventual feature direction. - Raise the bar for frontend: Mentor frontend engineers, run craft critiques, and set the patterns and standards that lift every shipped surface — codifying what "the Posh bar" actually means. - Influence what we build, not just how: Bring unique insights from your position at the intersection of design and engineering into roadmap conversations, enhancing our approach to solution framing by providing R&D leadership with new perspectives on what’s possible. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 5+ years building production frontend for consumer products, with at least 2+ years operating in a Design Engineer–style role where craft and product judgment are equals. - Deep comfort with React and React Native (ideal, but not required), TypeScript, and modern CSS — the kind of person who can build a complex prototype from scratch, while adding details that make every surface feel more intuitive and alive. - Figma Fluency — Hands-on experience with shared component libraries and optimizing design systems, and giving designers real feedback on what will and won't translate to code. - A portfolio of shipped work where the craft is the priority. We want to see the details: the animation that evokes visceral feelings, the edge case state nobody else would have built, the typographic system that holds up at every breakpoint. - Strong product instincts. You can take an evolving PRD and create an immersive prototype. Your presence in roadmap conversations highlights unique considerations. - A bias toward ownership. You take ambiguous problems, scope them yourself, and ship something truly delightful — without waiting to be told what "done" looks like. - Comfortable working in-person in NYC, 5 days a week, alongside a small team that ships fast. NICE TO HAVE - Background in consumer, social, or marketplace products is a plus — especially anything where the experience is the reason people come back. - Experience shaping or owning a cross-platform design system that spans web and React Native. - Background working closely with Senior Product Designers on consumer products, where you've been the engineer that designers are eager to collaborate with. - Past experience as a tech lead on a small pod where you were the most product-minded engineer in the room. - Side projects, open-source contributions, or public writing that show how you think about your craft. Posh provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. Posh is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. Please let us know if you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability