Design Engineer – AI & Computational Biology – New York / San Francisco – $DOE

Design Engineer – AI & Computational Biology – New York / San Francisco – $DOE

Location: New York, NY / San Francisco, CA (On-site)

Salary: Competitive + Benefits

Company Overview

A fast-growing applied biological intelligence company developing advanced software and biological AI systems for federal and commercial applications.

The business brings together leading software engineers and computational biology specialists to develop technology that helps organisations identify biological threats, interpret complex scientific data and make informed decisions in high-stakes environments.

As the company continues to develop its platform, they are seeking a Design Engineer to take ownership of product design and frontend engineering across their core software products.

The Role

Working across Product Design and Frontend Engineering, you will help define how the platform works and feels from the ground up.

This is a hands-on role spanning product design, prototyping and frontend development. You will work directly with engineers, computational biologists, founders and end users to translate complex scientific and operational workflows into clear, intuitive and production-ready software.

You will have significant ownership over the company’s visual language, interaction patterns, design system and frontend architecture.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the design and frontend implementation of core product experiences from initial concepts through to production

• Work closely with users, founders, engineers and computational biologists to understand complex scientific and operational workflows

• Design and build interfaces for data exploration, analytical workflows, alerts, review processes and decision support

• Translate complex technical information into clear and intuitive user experiences without removing important scientific context

• Rapidly prototype new product concepts for user research, pilots, demonstrations and customer discovery

• Develop and evolve the company’s visual language, interaction patterns and design system

• Build reusable components and frontend foundations to support a scalable product

• Provide strong product judgement across information architecture, data visualisation, interaction design and frontend architecture

• Work across Figma, sketches, coded prototypes and production implementation

• Improve the clarity and usability of the product across onboarding, navigation, workflow execution, results interpretation and review

• Collaborate closely with engineering teams to ensure designs are technically robust and maintainable

About You

• Proven experience owning both the design and frontend implementation of production-quality web applications

• Strong product, interaction and visual design judgement

• Strong frontend engineering experience using React, TypeScript, modern CSS and component-based architecture

• Experience translating complex, technical or unfamiliar workflows into intuitive software

• Strong understanding of information architecture and data visualisation

• Experience working with design systems, reusable components and scalable frontend architecture

• Comfortable moving between Figma, prototypes and production code

• Ability to work independently and take ownership of ambiguous problems

• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain design decisions and technical trade-offs

• Comfortable working on sensitive scientific and national security related applications with discretion and good judgement

Desirable Experience

• Experience designing analytical, scientific, operational, developer or data-rich software

• Experience building complex data visualisations, maps, timelines or graph-based interfaces

• Experience creating or evolving a design system and component library

• Experience using AI-assisted design and development tools

• Previous experience within an early-stage technology company

• Background or exposure to computational biology, bioinformatics, biodefense or national security

What’s on Offer

• Opportunity to join a rapidly growing applied biological intelligence company

• Work at the intersection of AI, computational biology, software engineering and product design

• Significant ownership over the design and frontend development of core products

• Opportunity to work directly with founders, engineers, computational biologists and end users

• Exposure to technically challenging and…