Design Engineer

Eagle
New York, US
On-site

Who this role is best for

Best suited to mid-level design engineers with AI product experience who thrive in fast-paced, in-person NYC environments.

Best fit for

  • Designers who can both prototype and ship production-ready front-ends independently.
    — “the engineering chops to ship it yourself in production
  • Candidates with proven experience building and maintaining multi-team design systems.
    — “built and maintained a design system that more than one product or team depended on
  • Those comfortable explaining AI systems to non-technical engineering professionals.
    — “making non-deterministic, agentic systems legible to people who have never worked with a software company before

Things to consider

  • Significant travel required to embed with engineering firm staff.
    — “willing to get on a plane with us
  • Must work from NYC office despite potential travel demands.
    — “In-person office in NYC

How to stand out

  • Showcase specific examples where you designed trust-building interfaces for AI systems.
    — “making agent behavior transparent enough to trust
  • Demonstrate experience with both design and implementation of streaming interfaces.
    — “streaming and latency, human-in-the-loop review
  • Highlight projects where you rapidly prototyped based on direct user observation.
    — “sit beside a user and watch them click
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · TeamLevel · Mid Level

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • designed and built product surfaces
  • established design systems
  • defined interaction patterns
Typical background
design engineerfrontend developer

Skills & requirements

Required

Design SystemInteraction DesignAi-native PlatformReact/typescript

Preferred

UX DesignAI IntegrationProduct Strategy

Stack & domain

ReactTypeScriptDesign SystemInteraction DesignPrototypingAi-native PlatformStreaming And LatencyHuman-in-the-loop ReviewProvenance And CitationsAgent Behavior TransparencyLeadershipCommunicationProblem-solvingAIEngineeringInfrastructureEnergyClimate

About the role

Original posting from Eagle via Ashby

About Eagle

We’re on a mission to radically transform the way we design and construct our built environment.

Backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Eagle acquires and transforms civil, structural, and MEP engineering firms with applied AI. We’re an AI laboratory dedicated to providing engineers with the tools they need to solve the world’s hardest infrastructure, energy, and climate problems.

By arming designers with frontier technology, our ambition is to build the most valuable, talent-dense engineering firm in the United States.

The opportunity

Our core thesis: 85% of what engineers do today is theoretically automatable, yet less than 5% has actually been touched by AI. That gap is the largest of any profession. Our plan is to close it by acquiring engineering firms, building purpose-built tools for their staff, and compounding that proprietary intelligence across acquisitions.

As a Design Engineer, you'll work directly with the CTO to own how that intelligence becomes something engineers actually trust and use. The hard part isn't only modeling the data—it's making non-deterministic, agentic systems legible to people who have never worked with a software company before. You own the surface where that trust is won or lost. You get a front-row seat to building a company from zero—engaging with product strategy, firm acquisitions, and architecture decisions—on a problem domain that's barely been touched by AI.

What you'll do

  • Embed with staff at engineering firms alongside the founders; watch how they actually work, then come back and design and build against what you saw
  • Own the product surface end-to-end—from interaction design and prototyping through shipping the production front-end yourself
  • Establish and own our design system: the components, patterns, and primitives that have to stay coherent as we compound products across acquisitions
  • Define the interaction patterns for an AI-native platform—streaming and latency, human-in-the-loop review, provenance and citations, and making agent behavior transparent enough to trust
  • Collaborate directly with the CTO on product direction, culture, and what we'll build next

What we look for

  • Strong design taste and the engineering chops to ship it yourself in production (React/TypeScript or equivalent)—you don't hand off to someone else to build
  • Has built and maintained a design system that more than one product or team depended on
  • Has real reps designing UX for AI-native products and is comfortable with the problems that don't exist in traditional software: non-determinism, streaming output, uncertainty, agentic flows, and earning user trust in machine output
  • Has a deep curiosity for how things work (an organization, a workflow, a market)
  • Isn't afraid to expose their ignorance and is constantly asking why
  • Has the poise and communication skills to earn trust with people who've never worked with a tech company before
  • Can sit with noisy, conflicting feedback from users and distill it into a clear opinion about what to build
  • Is willing to get on a plane with us
  • Is not above any task: up to draw the icon set, write the component, sit beside a user and watch them click, or wire up an off-the-shelf tool to test an idea fast

Compensation

  • Competitive cash compensation ($150K–$300K depending on experience)
  • Founding equity, scaled to scope
  • Full healthcare benefits
  • In-person office in NYC

Source: Eagle careers (Ashby)

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