Senior Design Engineer, AI Platforms

About the role

This Senior Design Engineer role at Chess.com focuses on the intersection of UI/UX design and front-end development within the company's AI Platforms. The individual will be responsible for crafting compelling and clear user interfaces, translating designs into production-ready frontends, and continuously refining existing interfaces for improved layout, interaction quality, and consistency. A key aspect of the role involves rapidly prototyping ideas and iterating based on feedback.

The position requires close collaboration with engineers, partners, and stakeholders, supporting features from design through implementation. A core responsibility is to own and evolve the design system, contributing to component libraries and patterns that elevate frontend quality across the platform. This involves using AI-native development tools like Cursor and Claude to build and prototype technologies, emphasizing an AI-first approach.

Success in this role means not only delivering high-quality, polished interfaces but also designing the interface layer for complex AI-native workflows, including streaming, long-running agent runs, and tool-calling surfaces. The ideal candidate will have a strong sense of ownership, be comfortable with extensive coding, and actively participate in code reviews, ensuring robust and performant front-end applications.

The salary range for this position is between $115,000 and $195,500 USD annually.

Skills that matter here

• AI-native development tools: The role requires daily use and fluency with tools like Claude Code and Cursor for rapid prototyping and building AI-first technologies.
• TypeScript: Practical skills in modern web technologies, including TypeScript, are essential for building and owning design systems in code.
• Vue: Experience with front-end frameworks like Vue (or equivalent) is needed to develop pixel-perfect, production-ready interfaces.
• React: Proficiency in React (or equivalent) is required for constructing and maintaining the user interfaces and design systems.
• Figma: The ability to move fluidly between design tools like Figma and front-end code is important for creating and implementing UI/UX designs.

Who this role suits

• You are a designer-engineer who cares deeply about the fine details of user interface polish, including typography, spacing, and micro-interactions.
• You are excited to integrate AI-native development tools into your daily workflow, using them to accelerate idea exploration and development.
• You thrive in a remote, distributed team environment, demonstrating strong collaboration and communication skills.
• You possess a strong sense of ownership and responsibility for your work, from initial design to final implementation and evolution of design systems.

From the employer

• Design compelling, clear UI/UX and produce high-quality mocks that demonstrate strong product taste.
• Turn design mocks (yours or others’) into pixel-perfect, production-ready frontends using modern web tech.
• Iterate on existing interfaces by improving layout, interaction quality, motion, and design consistency.
• Work closely with engineers, partners, and stakeholders. You’ll support the design and implementation of features end-to-end.
• Rapidly prototype and “vibe code” to explore ideas, gather feedback, and iterate quickly.
• Contribute to design systems, component libraries, and patterns that raise the bar for frontend quality.
• Own and evolve the design system: the components, tokens, and patterns that let everyone ship UI fast.
• Use Cursor and Claude to build technologies that are AI-first.
• Prototype your own ideas and ship production polish end to end.
• Design the interface layer for AI-native workflows: streaming, long-running agent runs, tool-calling surfaces.
• Code a lot!
• Conduct code reviews.

Required Skills

• Hands-on experience fluency prompting and building AI-native development tools like (Claude Code, Cursor) as part of their daily workflow—and genuinely excited to use them to move fast on early ideas (this is core to how this team works).
• Cares deeply about polish. Defensible, articulate taste in typography, spacing, layout, micro-interactions, transitions, and information density.
• Strong practical skills in modern web technologies (TypeScript, Vue, React or equivalent), with real experience building and owning a design system in code.
• Contributed to open source UI libraries or design resources.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills working in a fully distributed team.
• Sense of ownership and responsibility.

Preferred Skills

• Strong UX and visual design skills with proven taste and craftsmanship.
• Ability to move fluidly between design tools (Figma, etc.) and frontend code.
• Background in internal tools, admin dashboards, or developer-facing products.
• Fluency prompting and building with AI-native code editors (Claude Code, Cursor) as part of your daily workflow.
• Instincts for prompt engineering and LLM integration, and for how model behavior (latency, streaming, uncertainty, failure modes) should surface in the UI.
• Experience building AI-native interface patterns: streaming output, agentic or long-running tasks, or tool-calling surfaces.
• Comfort designing or consuming APIs that serve front-end applications, clean contracts, performance, reliability at the boundary.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills working in a fully distributed team.
• Sense of ownership and responsibility.

• This is a full-time opportunity.
• We are 100% remote (work from anywhere!).
• This role is open to candidates who can work with at least 3 hours' overlap with Eastern Time Zone.