Design Engineer

The Role
Kaizen is entering its most visible moment. We’re building a new AI harness that will allow us to rapidly scale against government needs, and our platforms are slated to serve hundreds of millions of Americans. Our software is world-class, and we need a phenomenal digital designer to help our brand catch-up.

We're looking for someone who can build stunning landing pages that make agency stakeholders lean forward, craft motion and illustration work that brings government software to life, and establish a visual identity that reflects where we're going, not where we've been. This isn't a production role, and it isn't executing someone else's vision. It's setting how the world sees Kaizen, and shipping that work firsthand.

What You'll Do
Design and ship landing pages, campaign sites, and entry points for agency platforms that convert both agency stakeholders and mission-driven talent. This is an unbelievably serious responsibility — your work will be the first impression between a constituent and the government meant to serve them, and it will shape whether they trust it enough to continue.
Build the constituent-facing visual system (the typographic voice, the motion language, the illustration style), so that every agency application we ship carries an unmistakable Kaizen signature, and a person moving between two Kaizen-built services feels the same hand at work.
Develop Kaizen's own web presence including the marketing site, launch moments, flyers, and campaign work that convince agency stakeholders and mission-driven talent that we're the team to bet on.
Ship your own work in code. You won't be handing files to an engineer and hoping for the best
Use AI-native creative tools as real leverage. You'll produce at a volume and quality that wouldn't otherwise be possible at our size.
Partner directly with Sales and BD on federal pitch materials, demo environments, and proposal assets where stunning visual quality is part of the close.
Work closely with our Design Lead, CEO, and engineering teams to make sure the product and brand feel like they came from the same mind. You’ll share work early, ship often, and treat feedback as signal.

What You'll Bring
A portfolio with real range: web design work that's both beautiful and functional, motion with craft and intention, illustration that doesn't read as stock
A record of shipping independently, start to finish. You build with tools like Claude Code against your most ambitious idea instead of scoping down to what you can hand off
Strong command of web-native design, including how layouts, typography, and interactions actually behave in a browser, and how to design for that
Fluency with motion and animation tools (After Effects, Rive, Lottie, Jitter, or equivalent), used to add clarity rather than noise
Fluency with AI creative tools such as Midjourney, Runway, or Firefly, or whatever's currently best, used as genuine creative leverage
Experience building or significantly evolving a brand system from first principles, and the range to take a set of values and a roadmap and come back with something that surprises people