Senior Design Engineer - Product Experience

Tacto builds AI-powered software for strategic procurement teams in manufacturing. Our product is evolving fast: we're introducing agentic capabilities that handle larger units of work autonomously - and come back to users when decisions are needed or results are ready. That shift demands a new kind of interface. Not just new screens, but new patterns for how humans and AI agents collaborate. And those patterns need to be built, not just designed. As a Design Engineer, you deeply understand a problem, then design, build, and ship a solution - often autonomously. You contribute directly to the codebase: building features end to end, crafting polished interactions, and ensuring that what ships feels as good as it works. You think like a designer and build like an engineer. You'll join a small design team and work embedded with engineering squads to ship product. WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS Engineering velocity at Tacto is high. Features move from idea to production fast - AI-assisted development is the default. That speed is a strength, but it creates a real challenge: the gap between what's designed and what's shipped keeps growing, interactions get neglected, and polish falls through the cracks. We need someone who closes that gap by being in the code. Not a design system caretaker, but a builder who ships features with high craft - and who naturally improves the shared foundations along the way. Someone who obsesses over the details that make a product feel great: the transitions, the keyboard interactions, the edge states, the moments of delight. YOUR IMPACT In this role, you will: - Design, build, and ship features autonomously - from understanding the problem, through design exploration, to production frontend code that users interact with. You own the result, not just a layer of it. - Craft polished interactions and experiences - you obsess over the details that make a product feel exceptional: transitions, micro-interactions, keyboard behavior, responsiveness, accessibility. - Prototype agentic interactions in real code - the flows where AI agents present results, request decisions, and show progress can't be mocked up in Figma. You build them so the team can see and feel them. - Raise the quality floor across the product - review PRs, jump into feature branches, and make sure shipped features feel right. As you build, you naturally strengthen the shared UI foundations and component library that the whole team relies on. - Bridge design and engineering - you work closely with designers on what's next, and with engineers on what ships. You skip the handoff: instead of waiting for specs, you shape the solution in Figma or code, whichever gets there faster. WHO YOU ARE We're looking for a block-shaped designer - not a T-shape with one deep skill, but someone genuinely strong across multiple disciplines. In your case, the block leans technical: you're an engineer who thinks like a designer, or a designer who builds like an engineer. Either way, you ship real code and care deeply about how it feels. You'll be a great fit if you: - Have strong frontend engineering skills - you write production-quality React/TypeScript and you're comfortable owning code that goes to customers. - Have a real design sensibility - you notice when spacing is off, when an interaction feels sluggish, when a flow doesn't communicate what it should. You don't need someone to hand you a pixel-perfect mock to build something good. - Prototype in code as your default mode. When exploring an idea, you'd rather spin up a working version than make a static mockup. - Care deeply about craft and polish - transitions, animations, keyboard behavior, cross-browser consistency, accessibility. The details behind the pretty pixels. - Use AI tools as core leverage in your daily work - Claude, Cursor, v0, ChatGPT, or whatever makes you faster. You organize your workflow around these tools and push what's possible. - Can work autonomously across the full scope - comfortable