Design Engineer

Exa is an applied AI lab building a search engine unlike the world has ever seen. We build massive-scale infrastructure to crawl the web, train state-of-the-art embedding models to understand it, and develop high-performance vector databases to retrieve information from it.

Today, Exa powers search for Cursor, Cognition, HubSpot, and more than 400,000 developers. We've raised $350 million from Lightspeed, Benchmark, and a16z.

Our goal is to build perfect search over all of the world's information, far beyond what traditional search engines can offer. The interfaces for working with this technology are still being invented, and you'll help define them.

About the role

We're looking for a Design Engineer with exceptional visual taste and strong front-end craft to design and build developer-facing experiences across Exa's product, playground, documentation, website, and brand.

You'll work directly with product and engineering, moving from early ideas and prototypes to polished, production-ready experiences. There is no traditional design-to-engineering handoff. You'll use both design and code to explore possibilities, refine interactions, and ship.

Designers at Exa have broad creative license, and the freedom to create and lead new initiatives based on their best judgement. This role will be a great fit for you if you enjoy moving quickly across different kinds of work without compromising on craft.

What you'll do

• Work with product and engineering from early exploration through launch
• Design and build polished experiences across Exa's product, playground, documentation, and website
• Move fluidly between design and code to explore ideas, prototype interactions, and refine implementation
• Design new ways for people and agents to discover, integrate, debug, and build with Exa
• Identify high-impact product opportunities and turn them into clear, polished experiences

Example projects

• Rethink Exa's API playground, from its structure and interactions through production implementation
• Design onboarding and documentation that work naturally alongside coding agents
• Create better ways for developers to inspect search results, understand API behavior, and debug integrations

About you

• You have 4+ years designing and building software
• You have a portfolio of polished, interactive products or prototypes
• You have strong visual and interaction design skills for complex technical products
• You're fluent in Figma, React, TypeScript or JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and think in reusable components
• You use coding agents to explore, prototype, and ship ideas
• You independently identify opportunities, communicate clearly, and work well through ambiguity

Logistics

• Location: This is an in-person opportunity in San Francisco.
• Visas: We're happy to sponsor international candidates (e.g., STEM OPT, OPT, H1B, O1, E3). While we cannot guarantee your visa, we have historically been successful in sponsoring candidates from all over the world. If you receive an offer, our team will work hard to get you a visa.
• Benefits: We offer premium healthcare benefits (medical, dental, vision), fertility benefits, 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all new parents, and a monthly wellness stipend to all of our employees.

Exa is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related conditions, criminal histories consistent with applicable law, or any other basis protected by applicable law.