Staff Design Engineer

Design Engineer

Onebrief is collaboration and AI-powered workflow software designed specifically for military staffs. By transforming this work, Onebrief makes the staff as a whole superhuman - meaning faster, smarter, and more efficient.

We take ownership, seek excellence, and play to win with the seriousness and camaraderie of an Olympic team. Onebrief operates as an all-remote company, though many of our employees work alongside our customers at military commands around the world.

Founded in 2019 by a group of experienced planners, today, Onebrief's team spans veterans from all forces and global organizations, and technologists from leading-edge software companies. We've raised $320m+ from top-tier investors, including Battery Ventures, General Catalyst, Sapphire Ventures, Insight Partners, and Human Capital, and today, Onebrief is valued at $2.15B. With this continued growth, Onebrief is able to make an impact where it matters most.

About the Role

As a Design Engineer at Onebrief, you are the bridge between Product Design and Frontend Engineering—turning vision into working, high-fidelity experiences. You will prototype, validate, and implement systems that make Onebrief intuitive and powerful for planners in demanding environments. You'll collaborate closely with Designers, Engineers, and Product Managers to accelerate AI-enhanced workflows, robust component systems, and intuitive interactions that define Onebrief's next-generation UX.

Craft and execution are shared across Design and Engineering. Your ownership is understanding how the team operates today and elevating it, strengthening Figma-to-code translation, evolving component libraries, and building targeted prototypes that help us improve from alignment to delivery. Your impact is measured by higher quality, tighter alignment, and faster delivery of complex features. The work you do will directly shape how commands plan, brief, and execute missions—enabling better decisions, faster.

About You

You are a hybrid designer–developer who thrives on building what others only imagine. You translate user intent into interaction logic and work hands-on in code and prototypes. You love systems thinking and believe great design is as much about durability and clarity as it is about visual craft.

What You'll Do

Core Design Engineering

• Collaborate closely with designers on core real-time collaboration features such as dashboards, maps, timeline visualizations, and briefing workflows—cornerstones of operational planning in Onebrief.
• Translate mission and user needs into functional, data-driven interactive prototypes that validate workflows and behaviors before development.
• Help evolve Onebrief's design system, ensuring component durability, performance, and accessibility across verticals. Includes contributions in both Figma and code.
• Extend the system's tokens, components, and interaction patterns for consistency without slowing delivery.
• Partner with engineers to implement design at scale, balancing fidelity, feasibility, and performance.

Prototyping & Validation

• Move rapidly from sketch to prototype to production, using the right fidelity for each stage (Figma or code-adjacent).
• Validate usability through prototypes and tests that prove solutions before development.
• Leverage AI-powered tools (e.g. Figma Make, V0, Cursor, Lovable, etc.) to accelerate prototyping and validate behaviors quickly.
• Build "real-feel" prototypes using APIs and live data where possible to reduce implementation risk.

Quality & Systems Thinking

• Ensure shipped features meet accessibility, reliability, and performance standards expected by military users.
• Participate in QA, build reviews, and post-release audits to continuously improve production quality.

Collaboration

• With Product Management: translate ambiguous goals and early concepts into clear artifacts and scoped MVPs; align on measurable success criteria and surface risks early with de-risking spikes.
• With Engineering: Align to Onebrief's frontend workflows and conventions to partner seamlessly; specify states, data flows, and edge cases; write crisp interaction specs; resolve gaps quickly while ensuring feasibility, accessibility, and performance.
• With Design: evolve and improve the design system end-to-end; strengthen Figma-to-code translation of components (structure, states, tokens); and scale the system for varied environments (accessibility, contrast, font scaling, low/high-res displays) across surfaces.

What We Look For

• 10+ years of experience moving ideas through design and into prototypes, ideally with real user impact and usage data.
• Comfortable owning a problem from sketch to spec to shipped UI.
• Experienced with data-dense, highly interactive UIs and the constraints of low connectivity, strict permissions, and audit requirements.
• Experience working with APIs and reasoning about data flows.
• Excellent written communication—async by default. You show your work through flows, prototypes, and specs.
• Eligible for and able to obtain a U.S. security clearance (U.S. citizenship required).

Bonus

• Background in mapping, geospatial, or real-time collaboration systems.
• Experience in presentation or briefing workflows.
• Exposure to defense, public sector, or other high-trust environments.
• Familiarity with motion design, accessibility, or system hardening for reliability.

Notice to Third Party Recruitment Agencies Please note that Onebrief does not accept unsolicited resumes from recruiters or employment agencies. In the absence of an executed Recruitment Services Agreement, there will be no obligation to any referral compensation or recruiter fee. In the event a recruiter or agency submits a resume or candidate without an agreement Onebrief explicitly reserves the right to pursue and hire those candidate(s) without any financial obligation to the recruiter or agency. Any unsolicited resumes, including those submitted to hiring managers, shall be deemed the property of Onebrief.