Design Engineer, EU

Role overview

Ashby is hiring a Design Engineer for its Greater Dublin team. This is a hands-on hybrid of design and engineering: the expectation is that you can shape the user experience and also implement it in code. The company sees this as a core function, not a renamed frontend role or a pure design position.

The team behind this role was created to give people who enjoy both craft and engineering a place to do their best work. Ashby’s Design Engineering group works directly with the co-founder and VP of Engineering, and the team is being expanded from five people to more than ten over the next year.

What the role involves

You will work on some of the most complex product design challenges, contribute to the internal design system, and support product engineers with specialized design work. The work typically spans discovery, wireframing, visual design, and front-end implementation.

• Reimagine mobile web experiences by speaking with active customers, turning insights into wireframes, building on top of the design system, and shipping polished interfaces.
• Create flexible, reusable UI components that help other engineers build consistent setup flows and similar product patterns more efficiently.
• Partner with product engineers to improve clarity, hierarchy, and scan-ability in product screens so users can spot important details and anomalies quickly.

Why this role is different

Ashby emphasizes that this role operates on a real product at scale, with more than 100,000 weekly active users and millions of candidates interacting with the platform each week. Well-known companies such as Notion, Linear, Shopify, and Snowflake use the product.

The company also values fast iteration, close customer feedback loops, and a strong emphasis on visual quality. Design Engineers are expected to help define how the application looks and feels while balancing usability, flexibility, and depth.

What this is not

• This is not a design-systems-only role; design system work is only one part of the job.
• This is not a position for someone who wants heavy research and testing before every implementation.
• This is not suited to someone who wants a perfect solution before users see anything; Ashby prefers shipping quickly and improving through iteration.
• This role requires strong visual judgment and execution.
• You should be comfortable owning work without relying on extensive project management structure.
• The role is not limited to only the most glamorous assignments; customer issues and investigations are shared across the team.

Seniority guidance

Ashby has posted multiple levels for Design Engineering. Applicants should choose the level that best matches their experience and expectations.

• Junior Design Engineer: Up to 2 years of industry experience as either a designer or an engineer, plus evidence of personal or professional projects with at least a few users that demonstrate visual taste and growing strength in both UI/UX and engineering.
• Design Engineer (this posting): This posting covers mid and senior levels. The expectation is 2+ years of continuous experience as an engineer or a designer, excluding internships. You should be strong in both design and engineering, with exceptional depth in the discipline you practice full-time, and have experience designing products and shipping code to hundreds of users, including through side projects if relevant.
• Staff Design Engineer: Candidates should have already practiced this style of design engineering professionally, made major contributions to a design system, and designed and implemented features for hundreds of users while iterating based on feedback.

About the product

Ashby builds talent acquisition software designed to help recruiting teams work faster and more intelligently. The product is meant to replace clunky workflows with software that improves decision-making, automates repetitive work, and gives teams visibility into bottlenecks and performance.

An example given by the company is final-round scheduling: recruiting teams need to collect availability, identify interviewers, coordinate calendars, account for interviewer load and training needs, and adjust schedules as things change. Ashby aims to make that work easier and more effective.

Engineering culture

The engineering organization is built around the idea that a small, talented team can create high-quality software quickly while maintaining normal working hours. The culture is shaped by ownership, collaboration, and deliberate communication.

• Very little process, with engineers owning decisions that are often handled by product and design in other companies.
• Natural teamwork supported by clear, intentional communication.
• Strong investment in tools and abstractions that make the team more productive.
• Ongoing effort to build a diverse team.

Ownership and process

Engineers are expected to take full responsibility for their projects. Product Managers and Designers handle strategy, customer research, and the problem brief, while engineers take over the rest: researching the issue, writing product specs, building wireframes, and delivering the solution end to end. The company prefers coaching and growth over heavy process, even if that means some engineers need support to succeed in this environment.

Collaboration and communication

The team is described as humble, kind, and collaborative, with an emphasis on written proposals, prototypes, and research to gather feedback across time zones. Focus time is protected, and engineers typically spend fewer than 2 hours per week in meetings.

The company also meets in person at least twice a year: once as a department and once as a company. Employees receive a small budget to meet up with colleagues in their city or region.

Tools and leverage

Ashby invests heavily in developer tooling and reusable building blocks so the team can ship high-quality work quickly. This includes fast CI/CD, a working debugger, shared systems such as analytics modeling, query language, policy engine, workflow engine, and the design system, plus AI-powered tools that help automate repetitive development work. Engineers have an unlimited token budget for AI tools, though usage is not tracked as a performance metric.

Diversity and inclusion

The company says diversity is important to innovation and better outcomes. It is intentionally increasing representation and has shared that 25% of engineers and 50% of engineering leaders come from underrepresented groups. Steps mentioned include sourcing diverse candidates, offering generous paid family leave, and not using leetcode interviews.

Interview process

The hiring process is designed to help candidates show their best work. Ashby says there are no leetcode or whiteboard exercises. Interviews focus on previous projects, collaborative problem-solving, design thinking, and design-system work.

• An introductory call with the co-founder and VP of Engineering, lasting 30 minutes and conducted live, with screen-sharing of prior work.
• A second round that is either a 1-hour live technical screen or a roughly 3-hour async design take-home followed by a 30-minute live discussion.
• Three additional interviews, including a deep dive into a past design system or design project, plus collaborative discussions around design system specifications and decision-making.

Who should apply

Applicants should be able to both design and code, bring strong taste and execution in visual design, and feel comfortable working with a high degree of ownership. The role is best suited to someone who enjoys shipping quickly, iterating based on feedback, and solving product problems across both craft and implementation.

Who may not enjoy this role

If you prefer to work exclusively on design systems, rely on extensive research before building, need heavy structure to manage projects, or expect every release to be perfected before users see it, this role may not be a good fit. The team also expects people to be comfortable handling customer issues and less glamorous work as part of normal collaboration.