Founding Design Engineer

The Role
The founding design engineer will own how Noto looks, works, and reads. This is an opportunity to define the design foundation for a product our customers rely on all day—and to make it genuinely intuitive and delightful. You’ll combine design and engineering with strong product judgment, taste, and empathy for users, taking ideas from the first sketch through the shipped experience.

Our users spend six hours a day in Noto across a wide range of workflows. The product has grown quickly, and some parts are more complex than they need to be. You’ll have the scope and ownership to bring clarity, cohesion, and craft to the entire experience. You will:

Own the design of the entire product—from layouts and workflows to the words on every screen.

Design and build your own projects end to end, from the UI to the database.

Set the quality bar for design and shape other engineers’ work from early scoping through final polish.

Identify the moments that confuse or slow down our customers, then redesign and build better solutions.

Establish the components, patterns, and copy standards that define how the team builds.

This is not marketing or brand work. It’s hands-on product ownership, with the freedom to shape both what we build and how we build it.

Ideal Candidate
Four or more years designing and building software products

Full-stack ability. You’re comfortable with our stack (React, Next.js, Node, and Postgres), can use AI to ship features end to end, and can tell when AI-generated code is wrong.

Product judgment. You can take a messy workflow, such as rescheduling a missed lesson for a family with three kids, and make it simple. You can explain why your version works.

Care for words and small details. Labels, error messages, empty states, and emails to parents matter to you as much as layout does.

Comfort with ambiguity. Much of what you’ll work on starts with unstructured customer call notes. You go to the source, talk to the owner or front desk, and uncover the real problem.

Bonus: you’ve been the first or only designer at a company, or you’ve designed complex operational software such as scheduling, billing, or admin tools.

Interest in helping education businesses thrive

Culture
As our first design engineer, you’ll have a huge impact on how we build our product and shape our design culture. Here’s what’s true today:

Serve the customer. Our users run small businesses. We sit in their schools, attend their industry conferences, and take support calls ourselves. We get ideas by listening to our customers’ problems.

Low ego. We make decisions collaboratively. Nobody wins an argument through seniority, including the founders. Good ideas come from whoever is closest to the problem.

Ownership. You’ll own a large, mission-critical part of the product. It’s intense, but rewarding. Customers will send thank-you gifts and sing your praises when you ship something useful—and call for help on a Saturday if something goes wrong.

Work ethic. Team members work 50–60-hour weeks. Some late nights and occasional weekends are expected. The role is about growth and impact. If you want to build something meaningful and grow quickly, let’s talk.

Growth mindset. We attend industry conferences to connect with our users, learn, network, and push the boundaries of our craft.

Compensation
Competitive salary and equity worth caring about

100% company-paid benefits

Lunch in the office and a stipend for your work setup

Company retreats