Design Engineer

About GitHub

As the global home for all developers, GitHub is the complete AI-powered developer platform to build, scale, and deliver secure software. Over 100 million people, including developers from 90 of the Fortune 100 companies, use GitHub to build amazing things together across 330+ million repositories. With all the collaborative features of GitHub, it has never been easier for individuals and teams to write faster, better code.

Locations

In this role you can work from Remote, United Kingdom

Overview

GitHub is looking for an experienced Design Engineer to join the Design team.

At GitHub, we build solutions that improve the developer experience of people all around the world. As a Design Engineer, you will collaborate with designers, product managers, and other engineers to build the future of developer tools, with GitHub Copilot being your main focus. As Satya Nadella recently announced in Microsoft’s earnings, “Copilot is driving GitHub growth, and all up, GitHub’s annual revenue run rate is now $2 billion. Copilot accounted for over 40% of GitHub’s revenue growth this year, and is already a larger business than all of GitHub was when we acquired it.” GitHub Copilot is already appreciated and loved by many developers, and we’re continuing to explore how AI can best serve developers.

As a Design Engineer III, you’d work in the GitHub Product Design Team—a group of talented individuals with varied backgrounds in product design, design systems, design ops, front-end development, and illustration. You’ll focus at the intersection of design and front-end engineering, working closely with systems designers, engineers,  and product management to create and push for high-quality design and experiences.

Responsibilities

What we’re looking for

Design Engineers at GitHub are expert individual contributors; they’re given a lot of autonomy and trust to work on our most impactful design projects. For this specific role, we’re looking for someone who values the following:

• Shaping: Defining great products and developer experiences with a point of view, where good defaults and what not to include is as intentional as essential as what makes it into the final solution.
• Systems thinking: This role requires a person who can think systematically when it comes to information architecture as well as existing and emerging UI patterns.
• Progress and tempo: it’s easy to get caught up in the meta-design details, so our team must be mindful that we keep making decisions and move forward quickly. We prioritize progress over correctness.
• Curiosity: In a fast-paced environment like AI and LLMs, our designers remain curious and comfortable learning about existing and upcoming new capabilities to identify opportunities.

Responsibilities

• Define and Plan: Translate design concepts into robust, accessible experiences that work across multiple platforms.
• Design Quality: Bridge the gap and collaborate with product, design, and engineering to build high-quality, scalable, and interactive components.
• Prototyping: Research and develop prototypes/proof-of-concepts to validate and refine design ideas and interactions.
• Collaboration: Seek out opportunities to connect with people and teams working on related projects. Foster meaningful relationships with product, engineering, and other cross-functional partners.

Qualifications

Required qualifications:

• Several years experience in product or service design
  
  • OR Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND experience in product or service design
  • OR Master’s Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND experience in product or service design
  • OR Doctorate in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND experience in product or service design
  • OR equivalent experience
• Experience as a Design Engineer working with Engineers, Product Managers, and other Designers applying UX principles, and a user-centric approach to product design
• Engineering experience working in React, CSS, HTML, and Vanilla JavaScript.
• Experience with WCAG compliance and/or implementing accessibility best practices.

Preferred qualifications:

• Portfolio showcasing your involvement in projects, highlighting your hands-on experience as a design engineer.
• Experience working with Large Language Models and AI.
• Experience building products for developer tools.
• Experience contributing to or using an established design system.
• Experience working with Rails
• Experience working with TypeScript, Jest, Storybook, and ESLint

GitHub values

• Customer-obsessed
• Ship to learn
• Growth mindset
• Own the outcome
• Better together
• Diverse and inclusive

Manager fundamentals

• Model
• Coach
• Care

Leadership principles

• Create clarity
• Generate energy
• Deliver success

Who We Are

GitHub is the world’s leading AI-powered developer platform with 100 million developers and counting. We’re also home to the biggest open-source community on earth (and 99% of the world’s software has open-source code in its DNA). Many of the apps and programs you use every day are built on GitHub.
Our teams are dreamers, doers, and pioneers, leading the way in AI, driving humanitarian efforts around the globe, and even sending open source to Mars (and beyond!). At GitHub, our goal is to create the space you need to do your best work. We’re remote-first and offer competitive pay, generous learning and growth opportunities, and excellent benefits to support you, wherever you are—because we know that people flourish when they can work on their own terms.
Join us, and let’s change the world, together.