[Hiring] Senior Design Engineer, Product @Buildkite

Job Overview

This new role on our centralised Brand & Design team exists to form a cohesive and consistent platform experience over 2026 and beyond. You'll own the craft at the intersection of user insights, design quality, and production-grade frontend engineering—working with fellow Design Engineers and collaborating across squads, including PMs and engineers.

Our customers are platform engineers at companies like Shopify, Uber, and Canva. They might just be the most skeptical people on the internet—and for good reason. They're responsible for software delivery at some of the biggest engineering teams on the planet. They're going to peek under the hood. They want to know how something was actually implemented, not just how it looks.

We're developing a Design System for the first time to create a better space for AI-led concept development. We have multiple product areas to elevate towards cohesion, and you'll have tangible opportunities to drive proactive, impactful work. Alongside the day-to-day where you'll operate with real ownership and autonomy, we reserve space for R&D—ensuring you have the time to innovate, bringing ideas, prototypes, and implementations that shape not only the Buildkite product, but how the market interacts with and understands CI for the future.

🚀 What You'll Do

Ship the Buildkite product in the open

• Drive the Buildkite product forward with high standards for ideation and execution
• Work collaboratively, transparently, and with the kind of craft engineers respect

Prototype like an engineer, design like a builder

• Design and build prototypes that go beyond static files
• Entwine design and experience early: real interactions, real workflows, real dogfooding
• Close the gap between concept and shipped product

Shape the practice of Design Engineering at Buildkite

• Contribute to our Design Engineering and front-end workflows, tools, and best practices
• Support these practices as meaningful levers for business impact

Translate brand into lived product experience

• Work embedded in a centralised Design team to bring the Buildkite identity to life
• Build a living system across touchpoints
• Ensure the product feels cohesive, intentional, and unmistakably Buildkite

Partner across the org to deliver coherent developer experience (DX)

• Collaborate beyond Product and Engineering: Support, Sales, Marketing, and beyond
• Ensure our DX is consistent and delightful end-to-end

Stay close to customers and platform truth

• Speak directly with customer teams large and small
• Translate insights into improvements, and push the platform forward with good intuition

🎨 What You Bring

• Experience working within SaaS as a Product Designer or Design Engineer
• Standard design tooling experience and capability; we use Figma/Figjam though are becoming more code-first
• Documented experience working with React, Tailwind, Vite and other front-end frameworks
• Proven ability to tackle complex problem-solving, together or individually
• Proven ability to give and receive constructive feedback and critique in an open, candid environment
• Proven ability to clearly communicate complex technical concepts to both customers and non-technical stakeholders across the business
• High empathy and effective communication skills. As a remote-first team, we value deep work, try to minimise tool distraction, and collaborate constantly as a high-trust small team

Additional Experience That's a Plus

• Rails experience
• Understanding of DevOps field and related DevTools space
• Knowledge of CI/CD or related developer tools (curiosity and willingness to learn matter just as much)
• Use of AI in process isn't mandated, though we'll ask about it to understand your PoV

How We Work

• Autonomously, with agency; you'll join a small team of high-performing ICs, with the ability to drive and influence business impact from the start
• Async by default, with focused sync for decisions, pairing, and unblock moments
• We ship iteratively; small releases, tight feedback loops, measurable improvements
• We document and work in the open; decisions, risks, tradeoffs, fails, the lot
• We aim for craft and delight, but we don't worship polish over progress

✨ Why Join Buildkite

At Buildkite, we value kindness, autonomy, and collaboration. You'll be joining a remote-first company where your work directly helps some of the world's best engineering teams build and ship software faster and more safely.

• Competitive compensation, including salary, equity, and benefits package
• Flexible, remote-first culture
• Meaningful technical challenges at scale
• Opportunities for professional growth, technical leadership, and cross-team influence
• A collaborative, inclusive, and innovative culture where your ideas make a real impact