Contract Design Engineer

About the Company:

Stable Kernel is a technology services firm and custom software developer building scalable software solutions for cutting-edge, innovative enterprises to move their business forward. We are headquartered in Atlanta, GA.

We’re a privately held, Great Place to Work Certified Company™ with a multi-award-winning culture and an impressive 10-plus-year trajectory of sustainable growth. At Stable Kernel, we support our employees in ways that help them do some of the best work of their lives.

About the Role:

As a Senior Design Engineer, you'll occupy the space where design systems, front-end architecture, and AI-augmented workflows converge. You bring an engineering background that shapes how you design—not just what you produce—and your decisions account for implementation tradeoffs before a handoff ever happens.

We're looking for someone who thinks in systems first, operates confidently across levels of abstraction, and is already using AI tooling as a real part of how they work. You're not waiting to see where things are headed, you're already there, refining the workflow as you go.

Core Responsibilities Include:

• Technical Impact:
  • Designing and engineering component libraries and design systems where token architecture, file structure, and component behavior map directly to what engineering builds and ships.
  • Owning the Figma layer of the system: variables, component architecture, auto layout, and documentation structured for real developer handoff — not just visual reference.
  • Integrating AI-assisted tooling (Claude Code, Figma MCP, agentic workflows) into design and delivery processes, actively improving how the team works rather than experimenting in isolation.
  • Identifying and communicating implementation tradeoffs at the design stage, so engineering receives decisions that have already accounted for feasibility, performance, and maintainability.
  • Moving fluidly between product architecture conversations and single-interaction design decisions, keeping both levels coherent within the same engagement.
• Business Alignment:
  • Partnering with product design and engineering leadership to align system-level design decisions with long-term product architecture, reducing downstream technical debt.
  • Contributing to project estimation and scoping with a realistic model of design-to-engineering effort, including the cost of ambiguity in component specs, handoff gaps, and design system divergence.
  • Bringing a clear point of view on what AI tooling means for how design teams are structured, how work is scoped, and how value is delivered to clients.
• Interacting with Others:
  • Serving as the connective tissue between design and engineering teams, facilitating shared understanding of constraints, conventions, and system decisions.
  • Mentoring product designers on systems thinking, Figma architecture, and engineering-informed design, translating technical depth into accessible guidance.
  • Communicating system decisions and tradeoffs clearly to non-technical stakeholders, framing complexity in terms of user and business outcomes.
• Autonomy & Ambiguity:
  • Taking ownership of design system strategy and component library decisions, driving toward coherence even when project pressures push toward one-offs.
  • Navigating fast-moving AI tooling with a grounded and critical perspective — knowing when to adopt, when to adapt, and when to hold the line on craft.
• Problem-Solving:
  • Proactively identifying where design and engineering are drifting apart and proposing structural fixes—in the system, the process, or the handoff—before they become delivery problems.
  • Recognizing when a design decision has downstream engineering implications and raising it early, rather than leaving it to be discovered in implementation.
• Leadership:
  • Advancing the team's collective understanding of AI's role in design practice, not as a novelty, but as a genuine shift in how designers think, collaborate, and ship.
  • Advocating for systems-first design culture, helping the broader design practice build habits and tooling that scale beyond individual projects.

Intimate, Working Familiarity With:

• Figma at an advanced level: variables, component architecture, design tokens, file organization that mirrors engineering structure, and developer handoff tooling.
• Design token systems and their relationship to front-end implementation (CSS custom properties, style dictionaries, multi-platform theming).
• AI-assisted design and development tools in active use: Claude Code, Figma MCP, agentic workflow tooling.
• Front-end development fundamentals: HTML, CSS, and at a minimum a working literacy in a component-based framework (React, React Native, Flutter, or equivalent).
• Collaboration with engineering teams in an agile delivery environment, including experience contributing to or reviewing component libraries in code.
• Accessibility standards as a system-level concern, not a checklist applied at the end.

General Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience spanning product design and front-end engineering, with a portfolio that demonstrates both.
• Demonstrable experience building or maintaining design systems at scale, with evidence of how the system connects to engineering output.
• Degree in design, computer science, or a related field, or equivalent demonstrated experience.

Nice to Haves:

• Experience contributing to open-source design systems or component libraries.
• Familiarity with tokens-as-code tooling: Style Dictionary, Theo, or equivalent.
• Background in retail, e-commerce, loyalty, or other high-complexity consumer product contexts.
• Experience with motion design defined at the system level (easing curves, duration scales, transition tokens).

A Bit More Info:

Minimum Base Rate: $65 per hour

This is a contract position.

Stable Kernel operates a People Before Place Hybrid model, allowing most employees to choose where they can do their best work most days.

Minimal travel is associated with this role.

*Note – We are not sponsoring employment visas at this time. If you are currently in possession of an employment visa, it will need to be effective for at least 3 years from the date of your application for your candidacy for employment to be considered.

Stable Kernel’s culture is inclusive and expansive. We celebrate diversity in its many glorious forms and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender role orientation, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

However, we will discriminate against those unwilling to comply with the practice of our company values:

• we work with integrity always
• we respect our work and each other
• we are dedicated to life-long learning and sharing
• we stay hungry for new challenges

If you are like-minded in this regard, we hope you will apply. We look forward to meeting you.