[Hiring] Design Engineer @Restate

Role Description

We're looking for a Design Engineer to own the core Restate UI, design and code. Our UI is where developers end up when something is running, stuck, or has already gone wrong. It's a live window onto a distributed system that keeps moving while you're looking at it. The data is large, it changes under you, and the person reading it is usually in a hurry.

Holding the simplicity that developers appreciate about Restate as the product grows is the job, and you'd hold it end to end: the design decisions and the code that ships them.

What you’ll do

• Architect, design and ship the core Restate UI: from whiteboarding sessions with engineers to production-ready code.
• Show what the system is actually doing: execution timelines, retries, queues, state, failures.
• Build for data at scale: large result sets, live updates, filtering and search that hold up, and the charts and timelines that sit on top of them.
• Design the states nobody designs: loading, empty, partial, error, one result and far too many.
• Keep it fast: Restate is a low latency runtime and the UI should feel like one.
• Keep one mental model: developers meet the same concepts in the UI, the SDKs and the docs.
• Bring durable execution to life visually: ensure we keep shipping at the same design bar.
• Build scalable design systems in code: reusable components and patterns for architecture, code, and interactive elements.

Qualifications

• Production front-end skills: React, TypeScript, and modern HTML/CSS.
• A portfolio of shipped work, showcasing both craft and code.
• Strong design sensibility: a high visual bar across the whole product.
• Information design: turning a lot of data into something readable quickly.
• Data-intensive interfaces: pagination, virtualization, filtering, search, and charts built on real data.
• Front-end performance: profiling and fixing slow rendering, long lists, and bundle size.
• Visual storytelling for technical concepts.
• Motion design ability, built in code.
• Design systems in code: coherent components and patterns.
• Reading beyond the front end: able to read API specs, queries, and backend code.
• AI literacy: using AI to multiply impact and unblock yourself.

Requirements

• Prior work on developer tools, infrastructure, or AI product.
• Data visualization: timelines, traces, graphs, time series.
• Accessibility and keyboard-first interfaces.
• Creative development experience: 3D, generative, or game-like web work.
• Comfort reaching into the backend when a feature needs it.
• Comfortable deploying and owning something serverless yourself.

Not a fit

• You want to lead a design team rather than be the senior IC doing the work yourself.
• You expect a finished design to hand off, or heavy direction.
• You’re a designer who doesn’t code, or an engineer who doesn’t sweat the visual details.
• You’re not interested in technical subject matter.

Engagement, location, and travel

• Location: remote in Europe preferred; US remote for exceptional candidates.
• Travel: minimal; occasional team offsites.