Design Engineer, Circle
$90-100k
+ Equity + Annual Bonus Potential
Community platform for creators & brands
Be an early applicant
Community platform for creators & brands
101-200 employees
Be an early applicant
$90-100k
+ Equity + Annual Bonus Potential
101-200 employees
Company mission
To help organizations bring together engaging discussions, members, live streams, chat, events, and memberships — all in one place, all under their own brand.
Role
Who you are
- This role requires fluency with AI coding tools
- Strong alignment with our values, find our values on our career page if you haven’t read up on them yet
- You are proficient in English (spoken, written, and reading) at a CEFR Level C2 / ILR Level 5
- Hands-on experience using AI coding tools (Cursor and Claude Code) as your primary way of building front-end prototypes
- You embrace "vibe coding": using AI to generate fast starting points, then refining with precision and care
- Comfortable iterating quickly with AI assistance while maintaining high visual and functional quality standards
- 3+ years of experience building web interfaces with React, modern JavaScript, and component-based architecture
- Strong experience with React, TypeScript, Next.js, and Tailwind (or very similar modern front-end stack)
- Strong grasp of React fundamentals (functional components, hooks, props/state) and layout systems (Flexbox, Grid)
- Experience working with Tailwind CSS and libraries like Radix, Headless UI, or shadcn/ui
- Comfortable working in a real production-style codebase
- Familiarity with Git workflows and preview deployments (e.g. Vercel)
- Experience translating polished design specs into functional code
- Comfortable navigating complex Figma files—extracting assets, understanding auto-layout and component behavior
- High attention to detail when it comes to visual fidelity, interaction behavior, and polish
- You lean design-side for an engineer: you care about pixels, UX quality, and interaction polish
- Exceptional communication skills—you write clearly, present your work confidently, and collaborate well across disciplines
- Comfortable working both asynchronously and in real-time—sharing progress, giving updates, and contributing to team discussions
- Collaborative and open—you balance design priorities with thoughtful technical input
- You might have started as a web designer or have a strong visual/design background and grew into modern front-end engineering
- You've been building small apps, tools, or experiments on your own using modern front-end stacks and AI coding tools
- You're constantly exploring new libraries, tools, and workflows to move faster and improve quality
Desirable
- Experience with animation libraries (Framer Motion, CSS transitions)
- Understanding of accessibility fundamentals (semantic HTML, ARIA, keyboard navigation)
- Familiarity with other AI-assisted development workflows and tools
What the job involves
- We're looking for a Design Engineer: you'll work as design engineer and front-end prototyper, paired 1:1 with product designers to turn ideas into working prototypes in hours, not weeks
- Our goal is simple: move from sharing Figma mockups to sharing real, clickable prototypes as our default design artifact
- You'll bring refined product designs to life—building high-fidelity, functional implementations that bridge design intent and engineering execution. Your work enables faster validation, clearer stakeholder communication, and smoother handoff to engineering, with reusable implementations that raise the quality bar for production builds
- Design owns the output. You'll iterate with designers until the implementation matches intent, then deploy to preview environments for feedback and review
- We expect you to use tools like Cursor and Claude Code as your primary way of building, generating fast starting points and refining them with care
- Work daily in tight 1:1 pairing with a product designer, turning Figma concepts into live prototypes in real time
- Build prototypes in the same technologies as our production front-end (React/Next.js/TypeScript/Tailwind) using Cursor and Claude Code
- Translate multi-screen Figma flows into working code, collaborating directly with designers throughout iteration
- Iterate quickly through critique loops—prototypes are the primary artifact we use to communicate product ideas
- Leverage the design system as your foundation—building new components only when necessary
- Deploy to preview environments for async review, feedback, and stakeholder alignment
- Offer input on technical feasibility and complexity as flows are finalized
- Manage multiple workstreams, balancing major implementations with quick iteration or refinement needs
- Collaborate with the product design org while sitting operationally close to the Design Systems and front-end engineering team
Our take
The influencer market is nearly twice the size it was globally back in 2019. With more creators flocking to the digital space to grow and engage with their followers, cracks in the existing platforms’ relationship to their content creators are showing. Circle is one of a number of content creator platforms rising up to meet the demand for change.
Its community platform allows users to create and engage with their own groups, for a small subscription fee established by the creators. This direct ownership and community engagement is proving something of a silver bullet for companies looking to tempt creators off of incumbent giants like TikTok and Youtube. Companies like Substack, Patreon, and Pico have all seen remarkable success with this strategy, suggesting that Circle’s foray into establishing something similar for a creator hub is playing to an eager market.
The company's ultimate aim is to pull together all creator tools like newsletter publishing, merch sales, and podcasting under a single Circle umbrella. This is ambitious - but Circle is growing alongside the creator economy at an impressive pace. If it can maintain this growth, it will be poised well for future success.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Employee endorsements
Opportunities to learn
"I appreciate that Circle provides an annual budget for courses and education, allowing me to continuously learn and develop my skills. Additionally,..."
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Dec 2021
$24.7m
SERIES A
Feb 2021
$4m
SEED
Total funding: $30.2m
Company benefits
- Medical coverage & reimbursements: Depending on your location, you will either be offered a full medical plan for you & your family, or offered generous monthly reimbursements to help with medical costs
- Equity package: We offer an equity package to every person that works at Circle
- Paid time off: We offer 35-days of PTO per year based on your hire date. Up to 50% can carry over to the next year
- Work from home, or anywhere: All of our employees are 100% remote!
- Learning & development stipend: Take advantage of up to $500 USD per year to help you level up your professional skills
- Home office stipend: New joiners receive $2,150 USD on their first paycheck to help outfit their home office, with a refresh every three years
- Company offsites: Twice a year, the Circle team gets together for a fully paid company retreat in incredible places around the world!
- Annual bonus: Roles that don't already receive variable income or commission are eligible to earn up to an extra 5% of their annual earnings as a yearly bonus based on overall company performance
- U.S.-benchmarked compensation, no matter where you are in the world
- Paid sabbatical: After 3 years of employment, team members earn a paid 1-month sabbatical to decompress and unwind
- Parental leave for parents expanding their family, or just starting one
- 401k with employer match: U.S. employees can partake in a 401k plan that has a 5% match, dollar-for-dollar 🇺🇸
Company values
- 🌱 Grow together — We give honest feedback to others with the best intentions, and listen to valuable feedback when it’s given. We strive to grow with our company and operate with a growth mindset. We own our mistakes and avoid finger-pointing when things don’t go our way.
- 💡 Trust and autonomy — Our team members have solid judgement, and seek to earn a high degree of trust from everyone they work with by showing them their best judgement. Once a team member has earned trust, they can operate with a sense of autonomy and can do their best work without too much supervision. Our leaders seek to instill a sense of autonomy in their team members.
- 🏃🏽♀️ Bias for action — We jump to action with passion and positivity. When faced with challenges or opportunities, we're able to move fast and get things done. We value achieving tangible outcomes above simply valuing the inputs to those outcomes (i.e. planning, surveys, process, etc.).
- 💻 Product first — Everyone at Circle cares deeply about our product, and strives to do their best to make it better regardless of their role. We're open to sharing or receiving constructive feedback about our product at all times.
- 💭 Long-term thinking — We're here for Circle’s future and value its long-term mission. We pause and reflect on the fundamentals. We constantly seek to make trade-offs which benefit Circle’s mission over the course of the next decade — not just the immediate month or quarter ahead.
Company HQ
Midtown Manhattan, New York, NY
Articles
Leadership
Sid Yadav
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously founded Rev2.org, and wrote for VentureBeat, before moving on to work on design and front-end engineering both freelance and with Wizpert. Prior to Circle, worked in various senior product roles at Teachable.
Andrew Guttormsen
(Co-Founder & Head of Revenue Operations)Previously an equities trader and analyst with SMB Capital, who moved on to found visitor engagement games design company, Exploreous. Subsequently held various senior roles in growth and marketing at Teachable.
Rudy Santino
(Co-Founder & Head of Design)Has 20+ years experience as a designer, and spent time at Teachable + Gumroad working closely with dozens of top creators.
People progressing
Katelyn joined Circle in early 2023 as a Senior Customer Success Manager, and is now the Manager of Customer Success and Onboarding.
Donald accepted a part-time 3-month contract to help with a busy quarter at Circle. His outstanding performance led to a full-time offer to join Circle's People Operations team.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Circle
Andrea Rojas (Head of People)
- As a fully-remote international company, diversity is baked into our DNA. Here’s how our CEO, Sid Yadav, frames our hiring mission: “let’s find talent in underserved and under-represented corners of the world, set them up to do the best work of their lives, and in turn, change their life.” To achieve this hiring mission, we offer competitive U.S.-benchmarked compensation no matter where someone’s located in the world, and we proactively seek candidates who expand representation of backgrounds, cultures and lived experiences in our teams.
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