What is a design engineer? (And how they're different from product engineers.)

As product lifecycles shrink and user expectations continue to rise, one type of hire is becoming increasingly crucial. These people combine deep technical knowledge with design expertise, and are as comfortable in Figma as they are in the codebase. Their unique combination of skills makes them valuable in any industry where design matters – which is, increasingly, every industry.

They’re called design engineers. But not many people know what they do (at least in a software context).

What exactly differentiates a design engineer from any other kind of engineer? And if you already have a product engineer, do you even need one?

In this post, we define the role of a design engineer, go over their responsibilities, and break down the characteristics that make someone great at the role, while making the case for why you should hire one sooner rather than later.

What is a design engineer?

A design engineer is an expert in both form and function, blending aesthetic sensibilities with technical skill. They sit at the intersection of engineering and design teams, creating products that not only work properly, but are also delight users with a superior experience.

In other words, they’re designers who code, or engineers who are also skilled at creating design systems. They help reduce the traditional handoff between designers and developers, leading to more efficient and cohesive product development.

A software ‘design engineer’ is actually a relatively new term. They’ve had (and still have) many names: interface designer, interaction designer, technical product designer, design systems architect, technical UI/UX designer, UX engineer, UI engineer, and design technologist. You’re probably familiar with most of these roles — if you want to hire design engineers, taking inspiration from these job requirements will help. Their responsibilities will differ from company to company, and even role to role, but they essentially bridge the gap between design and engineering to create products that meet technical constraints and user needs.

Companies in tech, aerospace, consumer goods, transportation, and construction all hire design engineers, though in a slightly different context. The ‘design engineer’ title already exists in other engineering industries (it’s commonly used in hardware companies) with very different responsibilities compared to how software industry has defined it. Because the term take on different definitions depending if you’re hardware versus a software company, we’d like to clarify that this article focuses on design engineering in a software context.

Design engineers may be responsible for:

Concept development: brainstorming ideas, user interfaces, and interactions.

Prototyping & testing: building and refining concepts across different levels of fidelity.

Collaborating across different teams: They can easily communicate with both engineers and designers. In addition to evangelizing design to engineering (and vice versa), design engineers are also often tasked with aligning product design decisions with broader business goals.

Developing and maintaining design systems: Hiring design engineers reduces the need for excessive design artifacts. Because design engineers have a strong understanding of engineering constraints, they can quickly move from wireframe to mockup to prototype without 50+ artifacts and explicit documentation for all possible states of a responsive screen.

Design engineering skills

In addition to strong visual design skills and coding abilities (especially front-end), design engineers today need a specific combination of capabilities:

• Prototyping at all levels of fidelity. They contribute to wireframes and mockups, but also build out design concepts in functional code.
• Systems-level and first principles product thinking. They’re responsible for setting up effective design system, and will audit existing workflows, note patterns, and write usage documentation in addition to their day-to-day work of building components and processes that scale with the company.
• Communication skills that bridge technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Project management capabilities for handling multiple design iterations.

Design engineering vs product engineering

Many people confuse design engineers with product engineers, but the two roles tackle different project responsibilities. While there is some overlap, the roles differ in:

Focus: Design engineers concentrate on the visual and interactive aspects of a product, while product engineers often work on broader functionality and features.

Skillset: Design engineers have a stronger emphasis on visual design and user experience, whereas product engineers may have a more diverse technical skill set.

Workflow: Design engineers often work more closely with the design team and are involved earlier in the product development process.

Output: Design engineers produce functional prototypes and implemented designs, while product engineers typically focus on building and maintaining the core product functionality.Design engineers play a crucial role in modern software development by streamlining the design-to-implementation process and ensuring the final product reflects the intended design and user experience.

Teams may need design engineers in addition to product engineers because products that are ‘designed’ by one team and ‘implemented’ by another can feel... off. Unless both teams work closely together to conceptualize and build each product interface and interaction, it’s often more efficient to hire a design engineer who can create interactions in code that capture both the original design intent and meets engineering specifications.

Characteristics of design engineers

Strong design engineers share the following traits:

They think in systems, not components

Design engineers are involved in a product from ideation all the way to implementation, balancing functionality with form at each stage, to ensure products both meet engineering requirements and delight users. Great ones don't just see individual parts – they visualize entire systems, and even go beyond the product itself to consider the ecosystem the product will exist in. When approaching a product, they consider:

• How changes in one component ripple through the entire design
• Interactions between new updates and existing user interface elements
• How designs will adapt across different screen sizes and devices
• Long-term design system maintenance implications

They’re obsessed with user experience

Unlike traditional engineers who write code and based on technical specifications, exceptional design engineers are deeply invested in how people will actually use their products. They live and breathe user experience principles, putting themselves in the shoes of consumers to whatever they design solves a problem, fits seamlessly into their life, and provides a great experience.

• They’re make predictions about their users, defending their hypotheses, and executing on them
• They think about edge cases and failure modes from a user perspective
• They're willing to challenge technical assumptions if it means a better user experience
• They understand that the most elegant technical solution may not always be the best solution

They approach challenges with curiosity and ingenuity to create solutions that are both practical and (arguably more important to some consumers) not ugly.

They balance perfectionism with pragmatism

The best design engineers have an almost contradictory relationship with perfectionism. They're detail-oriented enough to care about getting things exactly right, but pragmatic enough to know when "perfect" becomes the enemy of "good enough." They understand:

• When to iterate quickly versus when to refine extensively (and are comfortable with rapid iteration and prototyping)
• How to prioritize critical design elements over nice-to-haves
• When to push back against compromises and when to accept them
• The difference between essential complexity and accidental complexity

This balance helps them deliver exceptional products while meeting real-world time and resource constraints.

They have strong design & product instincts

Trust design engineers to have savvy instincts about what will work, even before doing detailed prototyping. These instincts come from years of seeing what succeeds and fails in production, extensive prototyping and UX/UI experience, and regular exposure to user feedback and behavior.

While they’ll verify their intuitions with tests, these instincts help them efficiently navigate complex problems.

They’re perpetually curious

Good designers excel at their craft. Great ones never stop learning, bolstering their existing skills with emerging technologies/new methodologies.

They’re quick to propose ideas. They also display resilience in the face of failed prototypes and unexpected challenges, learning from setbacks and refining their designs until they have something that works.

This curiosity drives them to find innovative solutions across functions, ideate useful tools for sustainable design systems, and keep their skills current in a rapidly evolving field.

They’re excellent communicators

Design engineers operate at the intersection of multiple fields. They collaborate cross-functionally with product and software engineers, product managers, interaction and UX designers, and marketing teams to align on broader project objectives.Design engineers must regularly translate between different worlds to

• Explain technical constraints to non-technical stakeholders
• Communicate design intent to production teams
• Regularly advocate for design-focused thinking

The best ones adapt their knowledge to communicate effectively across domains.

When you should hire a design engineer

A hardware startup will hire hardware design engineers at inception/seed stage, or during Series A, for physical product development. But software startup typically don’t hire software design engineers (your UX/UI engineers...etc) until post Series-A, or until they enter growth stage.

Early-stage companies might hire a design-oriented product engineer, or a versatile founding engineer to collaborate closely with product designers. This makes sense at the seed stage, but slightly more mature software companies may want to learn from hardware startups, and invest in the design engineering function as soon as they can afford to.

Because design engineers can implement designs with a deep understanding of technical constraints, they can speed up the product development lifecycle while establishing scalable design systems for the company in the long-term.
Here’s when we, at Paraform, think startups should hire design engineers:

1. As early in the product development process as possible.

Design engineers are most impactful when hired early in a startup's lifecycle, especially when the company begins building its product. They can help bridge the gap between design and engineering, ensuring that user interfaces and interactions are implemented efficiently and align with the product vision. A well-designed product leads to better user experiences, increased customer satisfaction, and potentially faster growth.

Hiring design engineers early also helps build a collaborative culture across Product, Design, and Eng teams, which is a compounding investment that delivers immediate value. Their unique scope of work means they orient the company around partnership and collaboration.

2. When design work becomes consistent

If your startup has reached a stage where there is a steady stream of design work (like prototyping, creating user interfaces, or maintaining a design system), it’s time to consider hiring a design engineer. A design engineer can ensure designs are implemented seamlessly without overburdening either designers or engineers. (Having another engineer take ownership of design implementation, and then passing it off later on, could prevent the production of scalable design systems.)

3. To avoid design debt

The longer you wait to hire design engineers, the greater the design debt will be (and the more costly it becomes to fix). Unresolved or poorly implemented design decisions become increasingly expensive as the product grows in complexity. Hiring early helps avoid these issues for a more cohesive product experience from the start.

4. When scaling beyond an MVP

Design engineers help refine user interfaces and interactions as companies transition from an MVP to a more polished solution, ensuring the product is visually appealing and user-friendly. This also has as an internal benefit as a company scales – when the product and brand are well-designed from the start, it becomes a source of inspiration and pride for everyone at the company, increasing a broad sense of ownership.

The case for hiring early

By hiring design engineers early — ideally when consistent design work emerges or when scaling beyond an MVP — startups can ensure their products are well-designed, cohesive, and scalable while fostering collaboration across engineering, design, and product teams.

In an era where product success depends on creating elegant, intuitive solutions to complex problems, these traits aren't just nice-to-haves. They’re essential for creating products that truly matter to users. Companies like Vercel, Linear, and Replit and actively hiring design engineers, and more and more startups are beginning to follow their lead. As long as companies are looking to build great products that integrate form, function, and feasibility, design engineers will be in high demand.

Bringing a design engineer on board

If you're thinking about hiring a design engineer, let us help. We’ve partnered with companies like Palantir, Ramp, and EightSleep as well as earlier-stage startups to hire for a wide range of difficult roles, including highly specialized positions like design engineering.

Our expert recruiters work with founders and hiring managers to fill your most hard-to-hire positions in less time. Book a Paraform demo to chat with a member of our team and learn how we can assist.