Senior Product Design Engineer

About the role

In this role, you will take charge of enhancing and managing Virtuous's design system, ensuring that our software delivers a cohesive and high-quality user experience. You will own the strategic evolution of our core design system, driving consistency and efficiency across all product lines while establishing best practices for implementation. Your work will directly influence how engineering teams build production interfaces, guiding them toward standardized solutions that reduce redundancy and accelerate development. You will act as the central authority on design system integrity, making critical decisions that affect component logic, architecture, and long-term maintainability. This position requires a proactive mindset, where you identify systemic gaps and propose robust solutions that align with both product goals and user needs. You will partner closely with cross-functional stakeholders to translate high-level design visions into scalable, production-ready code. Your contributions will ensure that our tools remain adaptable, supporting innovation across the organization without sacrificing quality or usability. Ultimately, you will define the technical and aesthetic standards that make Virtuous products feel unified and professional.

Key facts

What you'll do

You will architect and refine the foundational elements of our design system, establishing patterns that promote scalability and resilience. You will analyze existing interface implementations to identify inconsistencies and drive corrections that strengthen the overall system. You will lead the documentation process, creating clear guidelines that help engineers understand how to effectively utilize design tokens and components. You will evaluate new technologies and workflows, integrating AI tools where appropriate to enhance prototyping and development efficiency. You will conduct in-depth code reviews, ensuring that production interfaces meet the highest standards of performance and accessibility. You will collaborate with product teams to translate abstract concepts into concrete design system solutions that address real user problems. You will facilitate workshops and discussions with engineering and design teams, aligning them on system updates and future directions. You will measure the impact of system changes, using data to refine components and improve developer adoption over time. You will mentor junior engineers, sharing your expertise in component architecture, large-scale CSS, and testing methodologies. You will maintain a strong focus on usability, ensuring that every interface benefits from thoughtful interaction design and accessibility considerations.

Requirements

You possess at least 6 years of experience developing production interfaces using contemporary frontend technologies, with a demonstrable history of owning complex projects from conception to deployment. You have managed a design system in a production environment that serves multiple teams and products, treating it as a critical platform rather than a simple collection of components. You articulate clear trade-offs between design system distribution strategies and consumption models, understanding how decisions affect long-term maintenance. You maintain a strong aesthetic sense, consistently enforcing high design quality across all engineering outputs and resisting compromises that undermine visual or functional integrity. You have deep expertise in engineering principles, including component architecture, large-scale CSS methodologies, performance optimization strategies, and comprehensive testing approaches. You have hands-on experience integrating AI tools into your development workflow, using them for rapid prototyping and exploratory design experiments. You follow accessibility standards rigorously, implementing structural solutions that ensure products are usable by diverse audiences. You work effectively with designers, offering constructive feedback that improves both the design system and the final user-facing products. You produce exceptional written communication, authoring product-level documentation that is thorough, accurate, and easy to follow. You communicate primarily through email addresses ending in @virtuous.org, demonstrating your alignment with our secure communication protocols.

Nice to have

You have practical experience with design token pipelines and Storybook, allowing you to manage design systems with greater precision and efficiency. You have worked with Figma integrations such as Code Connect or MCP, streamlining the handoff between design and development. You have explored methods to make design systems compatible with AI tooling, ensuring the system remains adaptable for future advancements. You bring background in the fundraising technology sector, nonprofit CRM platforms, or the broader nonprofit industry, providing context that enriches your contributions. You are passionate about open source principles and understand how design systems can benefit from collaborative, community-driven approaches. You have experience optimizing frontend workflows for remote teams, ensuring that collaboration remains smooth and productive. You are comfortable working autonomously while maintaining strict deadlines and delivering high-quality results without constant supervision.

Practical notes

All communication at Virtuous occurs exclusively through email addresses ending in @virtuous.org. You are expected to use this secure channel for all professional interactions. Exercise caution with any messages originating from different domains to avoid potential phishing attempts or scams.