Senior Design Engineer

Senior Design Engineer

Quartermaster is building the world's most comprehensive maritime intelligence platform. Our SmartMast™ system transforms commercial and civilian vessels into a persistent, distributed sensing network—combining HD video, AI, radar, RF sensing, and AIS to deliver real-time maritime domain awareness at global scale. With 600+ sensors deployed across 25+ countries and more than 400,000 vessels identified outside of AIS, we are setting a new standard for what ocean surveillance and safety can look like. We are a mission-driven, high-velocity team building dual-use technology for defense agencies, coast guards, and commercial maritime operators.

Job Description

We are looking for a Senior Design Engineer who thrives at the intersection of operational complexity, user interface design, and front-end engineering. Reporting to the CTO and working cross-functionally with the Head of Product, you'll live at the intersection of design and engineering—translating high-fidelity design intent into production-quality interfaces that empower analysts and operators in complex maritime environments. You'll build the components, tooling, and prototypes that make mission-critical experiences feel seamless and perform under pressure. Good design here is not cosmetic—it is operationally significant, and requires production-grade technical execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and ship production-ready UI components from design specs, prioritizing performance, reusability, and scalability across our web portal.
• Develop and maintain our design system as living code—keeping design tokens, component libraries (React/TypeScript), and documentation in sync across our maritime intelligence applications.
• Prototype novel interactions and data visualizations—including live sensor feeds, event timelines, and tracking dashboards—to pressure-test new product proposals in real, interactive environments.
• Bridge design and engineering by implementing high-fidelity features like map interfaces and radar overlays that preserve design intent in high-density data environments.
• Build tooling and automation that accelerate the design-to-development workflow between product and core engineering.
• Iterate on implementations based on direct operator feedback, field testing, and rigorous performance insights from defense and government customers.
• Conduct and synthesize user research to inform technical design decisions, turning complex maritime workflows into highly performant and clear user journeys.
• Establish and enforce accessibility standards (WCAG), performance optimization guidelines, and responsive design practices across the front-end repository.

Qualifications (Preferred)

• 5+ years of experience in product design, UI/UX engineering, or front-end design engineering, paired with a designer's eye and a portfolio demonstrating mastery of data-rich web application interfaces.
• Strong front-end engineering competencies: Deep fluency in HTML, CSS/Tailwind, and modern JavaScript/TypeScript, with hands-on experience building components in React.
• Deep proficiency in Figma, including advanced component libraries, auto-layout, token management, and the tooling that keeps code components consistent with their design source of truth.
• A strong visual design foundation—typography, color, layout, and hierarchy—especially when designing for dense, operationally critical environments where information clarity and software performance are non-negotiable.
• Fluency in UX principles: interaction design, information architecture, and the technical ability to translate complex data workflows into simple, intuitive interfaces.
• Experience designing and building geospatial or map-based interfaces; comfort handling layered, overlapping data visualizations and Canvas/WebGL rendering paradigms.
• Comfort working in iterative processes, incorporating user research, field feedback, and performance data to refine and evolve your work.

Bonus Points:

• Experience designing for defense, maritime, aviation, or other mission-critical operational domains requiring precision, clarity, and real-world impact.
• Background in designing for data visualization, sensor dashboards, or real-time monitoring systems.
• Experience with motion design, micro-interactions, or advanced layout automation for operational interfaces.

Work Environment

• Distributed team environment working asynchronously.
• Start-up atmosphere with autonomy given to engineers
• In office and flexible hours