Design Engineer

About Sunspell Sunspell is a venture lab building companies at the edge of culture, design, and technology. Most studios build one company at a time. We are building the system that builds companies. We create products from zero, develop the people who can lead them, and turn the lessons from every venture into shared infrastructure through our internal operating system, so each launch makes the next one faster. The beliefs underneath are simple: taste is the moat, systems compound, ownership beats consensus, and the best work is day-one useful. Design is not the output of the lab. It is one of the ways we discover, test, and make new companies real. This is for people who want to build companies, not just work at them. You start with taste and end in shipped code. You can shape a visual system, design a product surface, and build the working version without waiting for a handoff. You come from visual design, with taste across brand and product. You use automation tools like Claude as part of your everyday build stack, not as a novelty. Lab first, studio sometimes. Your home base is the lab: our own ventures, products, prototypes, and internal systems, taken from zero to usable. Now and then you jump onto a studio project for an outside partner, but the lab is where you live. This is not a handoff role. You own the whole arc, from reference and visual direction to interface, code, prototype, and shipped product. The same person who decides how it looks builds how it works. The hybrid is the point. What you will build Design and build product UI, websites, prototypes, onboarding flows, and launch pages in real code. Shape brand and visual systems: identity, type, layout, and art direction. Turn loose ideas into clickable, usable, testable things, fast. Build reusable components and systems the next project ships on. Your first 90 days Ship at least one craft-grade surface across brand, product, or web that becomes a reference point for the team. Build your own designs in the real codebase, end to end. Stand up at least one reusable system the team adopts. Show how you think: references, explorations, tradeoffs, and what you would do differently. Who thrives here We are betting on people with founder-shaped energy: people who notice what is missing, make the first version, and improve it without being asked. You care about the feeling of the thing as much as its function. You want ownership, range, and momentum. You are energized by early-stage ambiguity and can move between a small number of active ventures without losing the thread. You have visual taste across brand and product. You can critique sharply without making the room smaller. You like fast prototypes, strange references, working demos, and the velocity of a real launch. You can lean in during a bounded launch sprint, communicate your limits clearly, and take recovery seriously afterward. This is probably not your seat if You want a narrow lane or need a finished brief before you begin. You only want to design, or only want to implement someone else's designs. You want to optimize one mature product for years. You prefer broad consensus to a clear owner making a well-reasoned decision. You might be a fit even if You do not have a perfect resume, a famous logo, or years of experience. We care more about what you have built, how you think, and how quickly you learn. You are not yet a deep engineer, but you have shipped something in code and want to become substantially better. You understand that a convincing prototype and production-ready software are different things. Your taste may be ahead of your title. We hire for judgment, ownership, craft, and learning speed, especially when that taste survives contact with reality. How we work Build fast, break well. We prototype early, test in the wild, and treat broken things as information. Curiosity over control. We learn by building, not by meeting about building. Taste is infrastructure. We care about how the thing feels, but craft also means performance, accessibility, resilience, and code the next person can understand. Sustainable intensity. We work in waves, heavy weeks around a launch balanced by lighter ones, never three hard sprints in a row, and closures are sacred. Document the chaos. Every useful pattern becomes part of our internal operating system, so the next build starts ahead. Where this leads The front door is not the ceiling. A strong design engineer can grow into a lead role across the lab, become a core builder within Sunspell, or step into a Founder-in-Residence or venture leadership path when the right product and person converge. Lab leadership and venture leadership carry different forms of responsibility, ownership, and upside. We back people we can picture building companies, then give them increasing scope to prove it. Logistics Location | NYC, in-person first. Anchor hours 10 AM to 4 PM EST. Level | open to all levels. Compensation, equity, and benefits Compensation and title are set according to level, scope, and demonstrated ability. We are hiring across junior, mid-level, and senior levels, with a high bar for taste, ownership, and learning speed at each one. Every offer includes a clear compensation package and meaningful ownership. Depending on the role, level, and path, that may include Sunspell equity, venture-specific equity, or a combination of the two. Some candidates may be offered a defined choice between greater cash compensation and greater ownership. Exact terms, vesting, and eligibility are documented in the offer. Benefits include health coverage, excellent equipment, the automation tools you need, and a favorable PTO policy. #J-18808-Ljbffr Sunspell