Staff Design Systems Engineer

About Niche

Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply.

Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

About The Role

Every year, millions of families start the school search process. Students wade through a sea of information and decisions to make, and unfortunately access to help hasn’t changed much in decades: it’s not super clear what your options are, and you might not feel confident that a school is right for you, or think you’ll be able to afford it.

Niche is on a mission to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. Students need support choosing a school and paying for their education, schools want to find students who will thrive on their campus, and families need help supporting their students every step of the way. Niche helps ensure that it’s not just students already confident about college who get enrolled and can afford to attend.

We’re looking for a Staff Design Systems Engineer to help define what modern design-to-code looks like at Niche, starting with overhauling our design system Expedite in partnership with two dedicated Product Engineers and the rest of the Product Design team. This is an exciting UX engineering role that requires both frontend and design fluency and reports to the Senior Director of Product Design. You’ll build and ship accessible, production-ready components, create and use AI tooling and LLM guidelines, and help shape new design workflows.

You will work closely with designers and engineers to help shape the foundations, components, and patterns that product teams will rely on every day. Starting on day one, you will build your understanding of real product needs and then translate them into scalable systems, tools and processes, ensuring that they grow alongside the company. Your work will help unlock speed and quality across the Product org.

This role is ideal for a builder who is eager for more ownership. The biggest opportunities: scope of ownership and freedom to experiment, design the future of product design and development at Niche, and overhaul our design systems with your vision, agentic automation, and a lot of love. You will sit at the intersection of craft, systems thinking, collaboration, and design excellence, with senior leadership support and guidance on delivering your dreams to production. The Design team is so excited for this role to be open and can’t wait to work with you!

What You Will Do

• Design, refine and ship reusable and accessible components, tokens, and interaction patterns that enable teams to build consistent, high-quality experiences across web and mobile
• Contribute code to production and support Product Designers contributing code to production using agentic coding tools (Claude Code, custom internal tools)
• Establish LLM guidelines that align with the design system, enabling engineers and designers to quickly generate and implement designs and prototypes aligned with the design system
• Create internal guides and configure/create internal tooling to help Product Designers of varying technical levels adopt generative AI tooling in our daily workflows, making it possible for us to more directly improve and evolve the user-facing experience
• Define and maintain Niche’s visual language, guideline documentation and component libraries, including typography, color, iconography, and UI patterns, for both people and AI agents (think Stitch’s Design.md)
• Improve the contribution model so teams can effectively propose, build, and scale new components from real product use cases
• Track the latest tools and resources, stay aware of what's available and recommending tools to adopt while being mindful of hype cycles
• Clearly and honestly call out risks with reliance on AI tooling, strike a balance between short-term wins and long-term investments, and help advise on what people do best vs where agents can help

During the First Month:

• Meet and get familiar with your engineering partners, the designers you're supporting, and key stakeholders across the Product org
• Understand the company mission and vision, business model, and current state of the product
• Get familiar with our design system Expedite, design tooling, and how designs are defined and handed off to Engineering
• Shadow work in progress and perform a needs assessment with internal "customers" of Expedite to surface pain points and opportunities
• Begin shaping a vision and strategy for a new design system, grounded in unlocking speed through AI tooling and supporting spec-driven agentic development

Within 3 Months:

• Finalize a vision and strategy for the evolution of Expedite, co-owned with Engineering
• Develop a roadmap informed by business priorities and product development timelines that sequences foundational work, component migrations, AI-assisted workflows, etc
• Align with Engineering on a shared execution plan, with clear ownership, milestones, and success metrics
• Ship prioritized components, tokens, and interaction patterns from the roadmap across web and mobile
• Partner with Engineering and Product Design to stand up AI-assisted design and design-to-code workflows (MCP servers, Storybook + code, Paper.design, automation, whatever you dream up) that cut handoff time and empower Product Design to own improving the user-facing experience more directly

Within 6 Months:

• Establish governance, a contribution model, and accessibility standards (WCAG AA) in partnership with senior leadership
• Bake accessibility compliance into the contribution process, so new components ship WCAG AA by default
• Drive early adoption across product teams and establish baseline metrics for design system health
• Train designers and engineers on latest tools and best practices, help them get their tooling configured properly, or even create new tools for them to adopt

Within 12 Months:

• Evangelize the adoption of our design system so that it drives the majority of web and mobile experiences, with measurable improvements in shipping speed and consistency
• Deliver mature AI-assisted design and design-to-code workflows that meaningfully reduce the time from idea to production for designers and engineers
• Maintain accessibility compliance across the system through design systems reviews for work in progress and/or automated checks that catch regressions before they ship
• Continue overseeing collaborative maintenance and evolution of the design system

What We Are Looking For

• All applicants must submit a portfolio or case studies that demonstrate relevant experience your ability to ship features, design systems components, and drive business impact
• 6+ years of relevant experience, with a track record of helping set design system vision/strategy and driving adoption
• Regular user of LLMs such as Claude or ChatGPT in your actual workflow; you have AI projects you're excited to share that are relevant to this role
• Proficient with modern design tooling (Figma, design tokens, component libraries, sandboxes/repos, prototyping tools) and a strong point of view on where they're headed
• Strong technical fluency: we use React, Typescript and Storybook, but you should also already understand how to work with APIs and automation platforms, navigate performance tradeoffs, and have the ability to wire systems together
• Sharp eye that recognizes excellent design craft, with attention to detail across component states, interaction patterns, visual consistency, and accessibility compliance (WCAG AA standards)
• Active and engaged design critique participant, representing not just the design systems perspective but how to finesse AI tools in order to achieve the best user experience possible
• Excited to experiment with Claude Cowork, Paper.design, and other post-Figma design-to-code and code-to-design AI tools
• Confidently prioritize your time across teams and projects, juggle high-urgency projects in parallel and recommend what you should focus on in order to drive impact
• Self-starter who uses their excellent communication and collaboration skills to act as a strategic operator: identify the root issue, diagnose it, propose a fix or just go ahead and fix it yourself
• Resilience and flexibility that helps you adapt to a fast-paced work environment, frequent changes, and considerable ambiguity

Compensation 

Our national target base salary range is $164,000-$195,000, plus participation in our Annual Bonus and Stock Option Program. Base compensation will be commensurate with experience and skills.

At Niche, our Total Rewards Philosophy is centered around creating a workplace environment that attracts, motivates, and retains top talent by providing a comprehensive and competitive rewards package.  This philosophy is built on the principles of performance-based compensation, best-in-class benefits and work-life balance, and employee well-being.

Interview Process

Candidate experience is a top priority for our talent and hiring teams.  We believe in providing a transparent, authentic and comprehensive interview process where you have the opportunity to learn about us while we get to know you and your experience.  The interview process is outlined here:

• Phone Screen with Talent Acquisition Partner - 30 Minutes

• Video Interview with Hiring Manager - 45 Mins 

• Case Study Presentation - 60 Minutes

• Panel Interview- (Design) 30 min, (Engineering) 30 min

Why Niche?

• We are a fully flexible workforce empowering our employees to choose to work remotely, in our Pittsburgh office or whatever combination suits you
• Full time, salaried position with competitive compensation in a fast-growing company
• Best-in-class 100% paid employee health plan, including vision and dental and supplemental coverage
• Flexible Paid Time Off Policy
• Stipend that allows you to build your work from home office in a style and function that suits your personal preferences
• Parental leave for all employees (12 weeks fully paid) in addition to short term disability for birthing parents
• Meaningful 401(k) with employer match
• Your ideas and work will make an immediate impact on our company and millions of users
• You will join a team that cares about you, our mission, our work - and celebrates our wins together!

Niche will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future for this opening.  

We are currently hiring in states where we currently have employees: AZ, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MO, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, DC, WV.

Candidates only.  No recruiters or agencies, please. Sorry, we do not offer relocation assistance.

Niche is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. Therefore, we provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

All interviews are being held remotely. If there are preparations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please let us know.