Design Engineering Services
A design engineer is the person who closes the gap between the design and the shipped product. I design the interface and build it in production front-end code, so nothing gets lost in a handoff, because there is no handoff. This is the work most UI designers cannot do and most engineers do not want to.
What you get
Design that arrives as real code
Not a Figma file for someone else to interpret. Production React and CSS, built against your system, that goes into your codebase and ships.
Prototypes that become the real thing
A working front-end prototype in real code, so a hard interaction gets proven in the browser, then promoted to production instead of thrown away and rebuilt.
Design systems that exist in both places
Tokens and components that match one to one between Figma and code, so the system your designers use and the system your engineers ship are the same system.
How it works
Work in the real medium
Where it earns its keep, I design in code rather than in a static file, because the browser tells the truth about layout, states, and motion that a mockup only guesses at.
Build against your stack
React, your component library, your tokens. The output is a pull request your team can read and review, not a foreign artifact bolted onto the side.
Ship and hand over cleanly
The work lands in production, documented enough that your engineers can extend it without me, because a design engineer who becomes a dependency has failed.
From $6,000
A defined design engineering engagement starts at $6,000. Ongoing front-end and design-system work is scoped per project. No hourly billing.
Work behind the offer
Common questions
What does a design engineer actually do?
A design engineer designs an interface and builds it in production front-end code. It is the overlap between product design and front-end engineering, which means the intent survives all the way to what users see, instead of degrading through a handoff.
Do you do Figma to React?
Yes, but not by pushing an export button. The valuable version is designing so the code nearly writes itself, shared token names, one to one components, real layout, then building it by hand against your stack so it is production quality, not generated div soup.
How is this different from hiring a UI designer and a front-end developer?
Two people means a handoff, and a handoff is where intent leaks and time goes. One person who does both removes the translation step entirely. For the kind of work where the details are the product, that is faster and truer to the design.
Will your code fit our codebase, or is it throwaway?
It fits. I build against your framework, your component library, and your tokens, and hand you a pull request your team can review and extend. The goal is code that lives in your product, not a prototype you rebuild.
Often paired with
Ready when you are.
A 20 minute call, no deck required. I respond within 12 hours.
Book a 20 minute call