Design Engineer

Department: Engineering

Location: *HQ - San Francisco, CA

Compensation: $180K – $250K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

About Cartesia

Our mission is to build the next generation of AI: ubiquitous, interactive intelligence that runs wherever you are. Today, not even the best models can continuously process and reason over a year-long stream of audio, video and text—1B text tokens, 10B audio tokens and 1T video tokens—let alone do this on-device.

We're pioneering the model architectures that will make this possible. Our founding team met as PhDs at the Stanford AI Lab, where we invented State Space Models or SSMs, a new primitive for training efficient, large-scale foundation models. Our team combines deep expertise in model innovation and systems engineering paired with a design-minded product engineering team to build and ship cutting edge models and experiences.

We're funded by leading investors at Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with Factory, Conviction, A Star, General Catalyst, SV Angel, Databricks and others. We're fortunate to have the support of many amazing advisors, and 90+ angels across many industries, including the world's foremost experts in AI.

About the Role

Cartesia is hiring a Design Engineer to work on React design systems and product polish on our web surfaces.

Your Impact

• Own the appearance of our web-based surfaces, with high agency to proactively fix design and performance issues.

• Design and implement UI features from scratch.

• Work on last-mile polish, making sure every pixel counts.

• Develop and maintain a React design system intended to multiply product engineering velocity.

• Build a process that enables Cartesia to proactively identify gaps & opportunities in the design of its web surfaces.

What You Bring

• 2+ years of experience

• Exceptional at both design and engineering

• Ability to spot pixel-level imperfections in digital interfaces; on the engineering side

• Proficient in TypeScript, with a focus on writing well-typed, maintainable code

• Portfolio (website or social profile) showcasing design engineering work

• Perfectionism in the fundamentals: last-mile polish, clear copy, accessibility, and web performance

• Experiencing developing and maintaining React-based design systems from scratch

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience working with shadcn/ui, Radix Primitives, or Base UI

• Experience optimizing React interfaces to minimize renders, possibly with profiling tools like React Scan

What We Offer

🍽 Lunch, dinner and snacks at the office.

🏥 Fully covered medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees.

🏦 401(k).

✈️ Relocation and immigration support.

🦖 Your own personal Yoshi.

Our Culture

🏢 We’re an in-person team based out of San Francisco. We love being in the office, hanging out together, and learning from each other every day.

🚢 We ship fast. All of our work is novel and cutting edge, and execution speed is paramount. We have a high bar, and we don’t sacrifice quality or design along the way.

🤝 We support each other. We have an open & inclusive culture that’s focused on giving everyone the resources they need to succeed.