Staff Frontend Engineer (Design Systems & UX)
On-siteSouth San Francisco, California, United States
Job Summary
Architect and ship the front end for complex scientific workflows, leading component architecture, the design system, and shared infrastructure in React and TypeScript. Turn ambiguous product intent into concrete UI direction by synthesizing input from Product, Science, and Engineering into clear flows and shippable interfaces. Define UX patterns for navigation, data display, and multi-step research pipelines, then prototype production UI for molecular viewers, simulation interfaces, and results dashboards. Set front-end technical direction on state management, rendering strategy, and performance budgets while integrating the front end with backend APIs. Raise the team's craft through code review, pairing, and establishing standards for automated testing and accessibility. Work onsite in San Francisco three days per week with competitive compensation and equity.
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years building production web applications
- deep command of React, TypeScript, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML
- a track record of owning front-end architecture from design through ship
- Real technical leadership
- Experience with data-heavy, workflow-heavy, or tool-heavy products
- Comfort with ambiguity
- Product thinking at the interaction level
- Solid front-end fundamentals at scale
- Comfort with data visualization past the standard chart library
- A portfolio or body of work that shows craft, ideally with code you can talk through
- This role requires working onsite in San Francisco at least 3 days per week
- Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S.
Desired Qualifications
- Experience with scientific or biotech software
- Background in or exposure to computational chemistry, biology, or physics, scientific research workflows, or drug discovery
- Experience establishing design patterns or component standards on a team without dedicated product designers
- Familiarity with 3D rendering or molecular visualization libraries (e.g., Mol*, NGL, 3Dmol.js) or WebGL
Hiring someone like this?
Get your role in front of qualified candidates on Sorce.