Junior Design Engineer

About the Role

Abhik, Ashby’s Co-Founder and VP of Engineering, has created Design Engineering as a dedicated function because the role blends design craft and hands-on coding in a way that he believes produces the best work. This team works closely with him, and the company is expanding it from five people to more than ten over the next year.

This is a true hybrid role: you are expected to both design and implement. It is not simply frontend engineering with a fresh title, and it is not a designer-only role that only produces polished mockups. The work sits at the intersection of strong visual judgment and strong technical execution, where each informs the other.

You will take on complex product design challenges, help raise the quality of other teams’ work by evolving the internal design system, and advise product engineers on custom design problems. Ashby describes examples such as redesigning mobile web flows with customer input, building flexible components for reusable setup experiences, and improving how candidate assessment information is organized and scanned by recruiters.

Why This Role Stands Out

Unlike an early-stage startup still searching for product-market fit, this role operates on a product already used at scale. Ashby’s software reaches more than 100,000 weekly active users and millions of candidates each week, with customers including Notion, Linear, Shopify, and Snowflake. You will also get quick feedback from Ashby’s own recruiting team and hiring managers, often on the same day a change ships.

The role is backed by both founders, and the company has kept the responsibilities of Design Engineering intact as it has grown. You will help shape the user experience of a powerful, complex product that must feel approachable to new users while still supporting advanced customization and automation.

What You’ll Work On

Design Engineers at Ashby work on the company’s hardest design problems, contribute to the design system, and collaborate with product engineers on bespoke UI/UX needs. The job involves moving between research inputs, wireframes, interface design, and implementation, with the expectation that you can carry ideas through to a polished shipped experience.

What Ashby Values in This Role

Strong taste in visual design is essential, along with the ability to execute quickly and thoughtfully. Ashby is looking for someone who enjoys shipping, iterating based on feedback, and taking responsibility for both the design and engineering outcomes of a feature.

The company also values minimal process, high ownership, deliberate communication, strong collaboration, leverage through tools and abstractions, and a diverse team. Engineers are expected to run their own projects end-to-end, including research, specs, wireframes, implementation, and communication with the right stakeholders.

Who This Role Is Not For

This position may not be the right fit if you only want to work on design systems, prefer lengthy research before building, need every detail to be perfect before release, rely on company-led process to drive projects forward, or do not enjoy balancing interesting work with customer issues and investigations. Ashby also expects candidates to bring excellent visual design judgment and execution.

Junior Level Expectation

For the Junior Design Engineer level, Ashby is looking for candidates with no more than 2 years of industry experience as either a designer or an engineer. They want to see personal or professional projects with at least a couple of users that demonstrate strong visual taste and early talent in both UI/UX and engineering.

Company Context

Ashby was built to improve talent acquisition software that previously slowed recruiting teams down. The product helps teams schedule interviews faster, track interviewer readiness and quality, and automate or simplify work that is usually time-consuming. Ashby aims to give recruiting teams software that is intelligent, powerful, and actually helps them work at a higher standard.

Engineering Culture

The engineering team is built around the belief that a small, highly capable group can ship excellent software quickly while still working regular hours. The environment emphasizes ownership, low overhead, natural collaboration, intentional communication, and investment in tools that increase leverage.

Developers are given strong autonomy, while managers and designers provide strategy and problem framing. Engineers then take the work from research through implementation and are expected to keep stakeholders informed without depending on heavy process.

Communication is designed to be thoughtful and efficient, with focus time protected and meetings kept low. The team also meets in person twice a year, once as a department and once as a company, and employees have a small budget to meet colleagues in their city or region.

Leverage and Tooling

Ashby invests heavily in developer tooling, reusable building blocks, and AI-assisted workflows. The company cites fast CI/CD, frequent deployments, reusable platform components, and tools that help with issue triage, prototyping, code generation, and code review. Engineers also have an unlimited token budget for AI tools, though usage is not tracked as a performance measure.

Diversity Commitment

Ashby says it is intentionally building opportunities for engineers from underrepresented groups. The company cites the current diversity of its engineering team and leadership as evidence of that commitment, and notes that it supports this through sourcing practices, paid family leave, and the absence of leetcode-style interviews.

Interview Process

The hiring process is designed to help candidates present their best work. It includes a video walkthrough request if shortlisted, a recruiter introduction call, a discussion of prior work with Abhik, a pair-programming or collaboration round, and a final round. Ashby states that there are no leetcode or whiteboard exercises.

Additional Information

The posting indicates the role is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is full-time onsite.

Ashby’s note about seniority says the company posts levels from Junior through Staff, and applicants should choose the level that best matches their experience and expectations. Internally, the company does not use these public titles in the same way, as engineers are leveled separately.

The company also shares that customer feedback can arrive very quickly after release, and that the role is expected to contribute directly to a product used by recruiting teams at meaningful scale.