Vannevar Labs
Senior Design Engineer
Job Summary
This role is for a senior or staff-level design engineer with a dual focus on design and front-end development. The candidate will own and evolve the company's design system, build reusable React and TypeScript components, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality user interfaces. Strong experience in interaction and visual design, technical proficiency, and system thinking are required. The position emphasizes mission impact, security clearance eligibility, and offers comprehensive benefits including remote work and wellness stipends.
Required Skills
Benefits
Job Description
Our mission is to be the technology backbone for strategic competition against peer adversaries. These missions – including intelligence, information operations, special activities, and perception management – are happening today and their success or failure will determine if we go to war tomorrow.
We've been on the front lines of these missions since 2019, and have grown to support a wide range of missions across all US service branches, multiple combatant commands, partner nations, and interagency stakeholders. We deploy both hardware and software products to support people on the front lines that span collection, planning / assessments, and effects.
We've grown from $3M in run-rate revenue in 2021 to $80M in run-rate revenue today. We've been profitable since 2022 and have raised $91M in venture capital funding through Series B. We're valued at $1.5B as of 2025.
About the role
We're looking for our first senior or staff-level design engineer to thread the important needle between design and engineering. Yes, we know we're looking for a unicorn – someone who can both design effectively and write production-quality code. This rare combination of skills is essential as we scale our products and establish design patterns that will influence our work for years to come. You'll join our design team and report directly to our Head of Design. If you're passionate about building robust design systems and crafting code that brings great user experiences to life while making a meaningful impact on national security, we want to hear from you.
What you'll do
- Shape the Design System: Own and evolve our design system to ensure it scales with our growing product needs, while maintaining consistency and usability across all platforms.
- Front-end development: Write clean, reusable code in React and TypeScript, building components that will be used by every engineer (setting the standard for frontend development) and visible across customer-facing products.
- Write great documentation: Write component and pattern guideline documentation that is clear and helps our team move fast with cohesion.
- Collaborate across teams: Partner with design, product, and engineering teams to turn product concepts into well-executed, high-performing user interfaces.
- Prototype and iterate: Work quickly to prototype new features and interactions in design and code, testing ideas before full implementation.
- Design and Build Special Projects: You might collaborate with Brand design on bringing to life an exciting new microsite or build and maintain tools that enhance the efficiency and collaboration of our teams.
- Maintain High Standards: Focus on performance, accessibility, and usability, ensuring that all products not only meet technical requirements but also deliver exceptional user experiences.
What we look for
- Proven Experience: 5+ years of engineering and/or product design experience with a track record of designing, building, and shipping great work.
- Strong Portfolio: An online portfolio that demonstrates excellence in interaction design, visual design, and systematic thinking. Point us to your latest project, drop us a link to your github, or link us to your personal site—we care less about the shape of your portfolio but need to see the work you’ve done and impact it has generated.
- Technical Skills: Proficiency with both design tools (like Figma) and front-end technologies (React, TypeScript, and CSS), with the ability to move fluidly between design and development. You will need to pass a frontend coding interview.
- Strategic Mindset: Ability to balance user needs, business goals, and technical constraints while maintaining focus on mission impact. You know when to jump into code or design to solve a problem.
- Systems Thinker: Proven ability to create scalable design systems and patterns.
- Collaborative Leader: Outstanding communication skills with experience influencing stakeholders and mentoring others.
- Autonomous Driver: Self-motivated with the ability to manage multiple projects while maintaining attention to detail.
- Mission Focused: Passionate about creating impactful solutions for national security challenges.
- Security Clearance: Must be able to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance. Active clearance is a plus.
What we offer
We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- 100% remote first culture. You can work from anywhere in the US and all full time employees have WeWork access
- Unlimited PTO including competitive vacation and holiday schedules
- Lifestyle stipends - Monthly mental health, wellness & fitness stipend, in-home office setup stipend and family planning assistance
- Salary top-up during military reserve duty
- Fully paid parental leave
- Child and pet care reimbursement during travel
We are committed to protecting the privacy of all applicants. Official emails from the company will come from an @vannevarlabs.com domain. Under no circumstances will a legitimate representative from our company contact you to request passwords, financial information, or other sensitive personal data. Please be vigilant of potential scams.
Vannevar Labs
Vannevar Labs brings together a multi-disciplinary group of people with a wide range of experiences, over 40 years of military service, engineers from some of the top tech companies and startups, and a passion for delivering mission critical tools to support public servants on the front lines of the country's most important national security problems
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