Senior Software Engineer II - Design Systems

The Problems You'll Solve

At Carta, our employees set out on a mission to unlock the power of equity ownership for more people in more places. We believe that the problems we solve today unlock the opportunities of tomorrow. Ink is Carta’s Design System – the underlying foundation for how all of Carta looks and feels. Our focus is to make Financial Technology safe, intuitive, performant, and fun (yes, we said that).

As a Senior Design Systems Engineer, you’ll work to: 

• Architect and evolve the Ink component library: You will build and maintain robust, production-ready React components that blend rigorous design system standards, intuitive developer ergonomics, and extensible API design.
• Redefine the Design System for the Agentic Age: You will lead the R&D on how our design system evolves to support AI-driven interfaces. You will update our definition of a design system to accommodate generative workflows, ensuring Ink is optimized for both human developers and AI agents.
• Bridge the gap between design and code: You will act as a technical translator, taking concepts from Figma and turning them into performant UI code, ensuring that the "polish" of the design is never lost in translation.
• Elevate frontend quality and developer velocity: You will drive cross-functional projects to improve animation fluidity, CSS architecture, and system modularity, helping product teams solve 80% of their UI problems instantly so they can focus on the unique 20%.
• Coach and advocate for system adoption: You will mentor engineers and designers across the organization, conducting code reviews and design reviews to ensure best practices are met, while gathering feedback to iteratively improve the system’s flexibility and ease of use.

The Team You'll Work With

You’ll be joining our Design System team “Ink”. Ink is where visual design, user experience best practices, and modern React architecture fuse together to create a beautiful set of tools that allow teams to create great products fast. Our ultimate purpose is to enable great design at scale. We are a team that sits at the intersection of design and engineering; we build the foundational components, tooling, and documentation that empower hundreds of Carta engineers and designers to ship consistent, high-quality, and accessible interfaces.

About You

We are seeking an opinionated but humble builder who cares deeply about the craft of software and the details of design. You have likely built or maintained a component library before and understand the unique challenges of serving other developers as your primary customers.

• 5+ years of relevant experience recommended: Specifically in frontend engineering with a strong focus on design systems, AI-assisted development, or UI infrastructure.
• AI-Forward Innovator: You are actively pushing the limits of what design systems can do with AI. You are eager to explore how component APIs, tokens, and documentation can be optimized to support AI development patterns and the future of agentic UI.
• Systematic Thinker: You have a track record of replacing custom, one-off UI with modular, reusable solutions, and you can articulate the trade-offs of API design decisions to both engineers and designers.
• React & CSS Expert: You possess deep, expert-level knowledge of React (modern patterns, hooks, context), CSS (architecture, scalability), and animation technologies  such as CSS Animations, Framer, and D3. You write code that is not just functional, but a joy for other developers to use.
• Design Fluent: You are comfortable working and collaborating  inside Figma. You understand the nuances of interaction design and can prototype complex UI behaviors to validate concepts before they reach production.
• Champion of Quality: You have a "polish-oriented" mindset. You sweat the details on accessibility, performance, and visual fidelity, ensuring that our system sets a high bar for the rest of the company.