Design Engineer, Design System

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Process: https://hexhq.notion.site/Hex-s-Brand-Design-Interview-Process-ea3c004bb20548978e35fd5463db56d1

TeamPage: https://hexhq.notion.site/Design-Hex-21a4d4a08e23457faad1378455e18ac0

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Hex is changing the way people work with data. Our platform makes analytics workflows more powerful, collaborative, and shareable. Hex solves key pain points with today's data and analytics tooling, and is loved by thousands of users all over the world for the beautiful UI, new superpowers, and boundless flexibility.

We are a tight-knit crew of engineers, designers, and data aficionados. Our roadmap is full of big ideas and little details, and we would love your help bringing them to life.

Hex has raised over $100m from great VCs and angels, giving us many years of runway and the ability to pay competitive salaries, offer great benefits, and provide meaningful equity.

Watch a demo of Hex on our homepage, read more on our blog, or check out our handbook for a better sense of what it's like to work here.

Hex is looking for a thoughtful, systems-minded Design Engineer to lead and own the next evolution of our product design system (named Spellbook). This role sits within the Design org and partners closely with Product Engineering to build a cohesive, scalable, and high-quality UI foundation.

You will architect, implement, and maintain the primitives that power Hex’s product. This includes components, tokens, documentation, accessibility standards, and advanced interaction patterns. You’ll work closely with designers and engineers to ensure our product experience is crafted with care, consistency, and long-term maintainability in mind.

• Own and lead the design system. Define the roadmap, establish component standards, improve system ergonomics, and shepherd contributions across teams. You’ll be the point person for how our atoms and molecules get built.
• Build for scale and quality. Translate design patterns into robust, accessible components. Develop and maintain tokens, documentation, and tooling to ensure adoption and ease of use.
• Raise the bar through collaboration. Partner deeply with designers and engineers to improve UI quality, visual polish, and cross-product consistency. This includes advocating, educating, and teaching across the org on best practices.
• Prototype and explore. Create prototypes that demonstrate advanced interactions, help validate UX patterns, and influence product direction.

You would be a great fit if you have:

• 7+ years of experience in front-end engineering or design engineering, ideally on a product or design system team
• A strong eye for design, with deep care for layout, motion, affordances, and visual polish
• Expertise in modern front-end technologies, especially Typescript, React, component-driven architectures, and accessibility best practices
• Experience building or maintaining design systems, tokens, components, documentation, governance models
• A portfolio showing UI engineering craft, component thinking, and prototyping ability
• A systems mindset: you think in primitives and abstractions, not one-off solutions
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to articulate rationale and influence cross-functionally
• A collaborative, open-minded approach and comfort working with partners across levels
• Strong attention to detail and a commitment to quality, without losing momentum
• Bonus: experience going deep on major and minor frontend performance problems