Senior Design Engineer

Job description

ABOUT BUFFER We create social media and brand-building software for small businesses, creators, and individuals. Our mission is to provide essential tools to help small businesses get off the ground and grow. Through exceptional customer service and uplifting content, we help our customers believe they can succeed and do good along the way. Buffer is a fully distributed team, and we’ve always aimed to do things a little differently at Buffer. Since the early days, we’ve focused on building one of the most unique and fulfilling workplaces by rethinking a lot of traditional practices. We also default to transparency, so you can read all about our metrics, and our successes and failures along the way on our Transparency Dashboard https://buffer.com/open. We're united by Buffer's values https://buffer.com/about#values, and we hire and work from all over the world. We strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment, and we are building a culture where underrepresented groups are welcome and can flourish. Please note that we do travel to work together in person once or twice per year, and those events are highly encouraged to build deeper connections among our small team. As you get to know Buffer and consider joining the journey, you can learn more about Buffer on our Journey https://buffer.com/journey page. Still curious to learn more about the experience on the Buffer team? Feel free to read more from Kirsti https://buffer.com/resources/first-30-days-buffer/ and Sabreen https://buffer.com/resources/joined-3-days-before-the-retreat/ as they share their first experiences with Buffer, as well as from Hailley https://buffer.com/resources/8-years-at-buffer/, who captured why she still calls Buffer home after 8+ years. ABOUT THE ROLE We're looking for a Senior Design Engineer to join Buffer's Marketing team. You'll be the engineer closest to how Buffer looks and feels on the web — owning our front-end design system, building performant components, and crafting the interactions and animations that bring our pages to life. This is a small, agile team where members are trusted to manage their own time, and where you'll work across brand, product marketing, and growth projects. Buffer recently went through a significant brand redesign, and now we want to scale it. That means pushing our attention to design detail and craft further, improving site performance and accessibility, and creating the kind of consumer-grade web experiences that make people stop and notice. Our marketing site is the window into everything we're building, and as Buffer grows (both in the creators and small teams we serve, and in the product itself), we want the site to reflect that energy and ambition. You'll work closely with marketing leadership, our UX designer, and customer advocates to understand what our visitors need and figure out the best way to build it. You'll write and ship high-quality, tested code, and contribute to front-end engineering standards that raise the bar for consistency and quality across our marketing codebases. Working at Buffer is collaborative and positive thanks to our core values. We try to be "No Ego Doers" who are aware of our assumptions, and joining us means you'll work together as a team to test and confirm our ideas. WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH This role reports to Kateryna Porshnieva https://www.linkedin.com/in/kporshnieva/, Head of Engineering Operations, and sits on the Marketing team. You'll collaborate on a variety of Brand and Product Marketing projects with the full Marketing team, partnering closely with Simon Heaton https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatonsimon/, Director of Growth Marketing, and Hailley Griffis https://www.linkedin.com/in/hailleygriffis/, Head of Communications and Content. You'll work day-to-day with most of the team, in particular Kate Baldrey https://www.linkedin.com/in/katebaldrey/, our Marketing UX Designer, to build web experiences that help people learn about and sign up for Buffer. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Build polished, interactive web experiences for buffer.com http://buffer.com - product launch pages, brand storytelling, landing pages, and marketing tools - in close collaboration with Kate (UX Design) and the wider marketing team. - Bring pages to life with thoughtful animations and interactions using Motion, CSS animations, or whatever approach fits. We want buffer.com http://buffer.com to feel as good as our product, and you'll be the person making that happen. - Evolve and maintain Buffer's design system and component library - improving consistency, filling gaps, and refining patterns so the whole team can ship high-quality pages without starting from scratch each time. - Improve accessibility and performance across buffer.com http://buffer.com through ongoing iteration - auditing what's there, fixing what needs fixing, and raising the standards over time so every visitor has a great experience. - Help shape how we work by pairing with engineers, reviewing code, and sharing what you know about front-end architecture, design systems, and accessibility patterns. HELPFUL SKILLS AND EXPERIENCES - We'd love to see examples of your work - whether that's a portfolio, a personal site, open source contributions, or anything else that shows how you think about interaction quality, visual detail, and front-end craft. We're especially interested in animation work, component systems, or projects where you owned the implementation. - You're a strong front-end engineer with solid experience in React and TypeScript. Our site runs on Next.js, but we care more about your depth of understanding and willingness to learn than matching our exact stack. Experience with Next.js App Router, SSR/ISR patterns, or Edge functions is a plus. - You have hands-on experience with front-end animation - whether through Motion, CSS animations, or your own creative approach - and you've worked with design systems and component libraries. We're not starting from scratch here, so we're looking for someone who's good at improving and evolving existing systems, not just building new ones. - You care about the details that make a web experience feel right: accessibility, performance, clean code, thoughtful trade-offs. You also know when something is good enough to ship and learn from. - You think like a designer, not just an engineer. You have a strong sense of visual hierarchy, spacing, typography, and how users move through a page. You notice when something is technically correct but doesn't feel right - and you have opinions about how to fix it. You don't need a pixel-perfect spec for every state; you can make good UX decisions in code because you understand the intent behind the design. - You're comfortable navigating ambiguity and thinking in systems — you bring clarity and ask good questions to move ideas forward even when requirements aren't fully defined. You look at the full system, understanding how different technologies and goals connect, and build things that can scale and improve holistically. - You thrive in remote, async environments — you communicate clearly, support your teammates, and don't wait for permission to make progress. You work effectively across marketing, design, and engineering, and can explain technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders. - You've likely been doing this for at least 5+ years, but depth of experience and impact matter more than a specific number of years. OUR TECH STACK - We use Next.js v15+ with React and TypeScript for buffer.com http://buffer.com (currently using Pages router, planning to migrate to App router). We use Express middleware for some routing (planning to migrate to Next.js middleware). - Styling with CSS Modules and Motion for animations, and use Radix UI and Base UI for accessible components (gradually migrating to Base UI as it evolves) and data visualisations using Recharts. - Our marketing technology stack includes Segment, Google Tag Manager, Mixpanel, and BigQuery for tracking and analytics. - We pull content and data from Ghost CMS (blog), Redash, Notion, Google Sheets, and various external APIs. INTERVIEW PROCESS Do you believe you're a fit for this role and want to join the Buffer team? We'd love to hear about you! Here's what our hiring process for this role is like. 1. Application. When submitting your application and resume, tell us why you want to join Buffer and take your time. This is your chance to make a strong first impression. 2. Role Interview. Chat with Simon Heaton https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatonsimon/, Director of Growth Marketing, to understand what it takes to work at Buffer. This is an opportunity for both sides to get to know each other and determine whether our expectations align. 3. Code review assignment. We'll send you an asynchronous assignment to review a pull request, to help us understand how you think about code and communicate technical ideas. 4. Technical interviews. Interview with a couple of engineers from Buffer focused on your technical experience and approach. 5. Leadership Interview. A conversation with Hailley Griffis https://www.linkedin.com/in/hailleygriffis/, Head of Communications and Content, to discuss your approach to leadership, how we drive value and impact in a cross-functional company, and to really get into how you think about approaching work and collaboration. 6. Final Interview. You will have the chance to meet with out Executive Leadership team. This is a great chance for you to gain a deeper understanding of Buffer's strategy, values, and work processes. 7. Collaboration Period. This is an experimental stage where you would work with us on a real project over 2 days (fully paid). The goal is to see how it feels to work in the team, both for us and for you. 8. Offer. We wrap it up with an offer and discuss the final details. We would align on the last bits before we make you part of the Buffer team 💛 At Buffer, we value diversity of experience, and we understand that comes in many forms. We’re dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team. So, if your experience is close to what we’re looking for, please consider applying. By submitting the application, you consent to Buffer collecting and processing your personal data for recruiting purposes, find more details in our Privacy Policy https://buffer.notion.site/Privacy-Policy-for-Applicants-230a7f5a00fd80e48478f09171d18a24?pvs=143.