what is a Design Engineer and how do you become one?

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the Design Engineer role is one of the most interesting directions in tech right now / and most designers still don't know it exists.

Linkedin headlines are silently documenting morphing design titles / we are moving towards a new definition of our roles and are individually shaping new identities 💋 

my gut feeling says that design engineering is going to be a big thing, so I broke it down: what it is, how to become one, where to find resources. 🛠️
*the short version can be swiped through in this Instagram post / the comments are also very interesting and validate this industry trend.

if you've been following me for a while, you know I touched on Design Engineering in my Emerging + Future Design Roles episode back in December 2024. I wrote one paragraph about it. 😅

since then, that topic has exploded: in my DMs, in my Instagram comments, in the broader industry conversation. Microsoft confirmed they're hiring for it. Vercel has an entire team built around it. Google has had a dedicated career track for years. And a recent article published by Anna Lefour on UX Collective called it "the design engineer symptom" / arguing that the role reveals something deeper about where our industry is heading.

ok so what IS a design engineer?

at its core, a design engineer sits at the intersection of visual design and frontend development. Not “kinda good at both” / but a distinct discipline focused on the space where design decisions meet technical implementation.

I defined it in my earlier newsletter as: a designer that can implement their own solutions.

I still think that's the essence.

my friend Mehmet Aydın Baytaş / who has a PhD in human-computer interaction design and runs Design Discipline, one of coolest design publications out there / wrote a really useful article: Design Engineering 101. His definition is sharp and worth quoting. A design engineer is an engineer with design skills, so that:

• they don't need designers designing what to build > they can take inputs that designers take and deliver the outputs that engineers deliver

• when working with designers, they communicate very efficiently and make contributions to design work

• they build with production-grade materials (code) for design decisions that can't be experienced on any other material (interactions)

• they build tools to make designing easier, better, faster

as Mehmet points out, for decades "design engineering" referred to the intersection of industrial product design and mechanical engineering. Now, in tech, it refers to the union of visual design and software development. And this shift didn't come out of nowhere > it's the result of macro developments: hardware that can now run impressive visuals on the average computer, developer tools like Figma, React, Tailwind CSS, Vercel, and Framer Motion that let design-focused developers achieve much more than before, and an economy where software is a commodity and design is the competitive differentiator.

but the role has many names, and that's part of the confusion. Google calls them UX Engineers. Stripe and Vercel call them Design Engineers. The industry also uses: creative technologist, design technologist, UI engineer, UX engineer.

Anna Lefour, in her excellent recent piece on UX Collective, put it well: despite the title confusion, there is a shared DNA: it lives at the intersection of visual design and front-end development, not as a generalist compromise, but as its own thing.

what I find fascinating is that this role isn't new. Google has had a UX Engineering career page (uxe.withgoogle.com) for years. What's new is the urgency 

> and AI is a big reason why.

what do they actually do? (the 4 jobs)

this is the part that surprises people. Mehmet breaks it down into 4 categories in his article, and I think it's the clearest framework out there:

1. Marketing → design engineers on marketing teams build impressive websites and make their company look attractive on the internet. Think Stripe's website / hundreds of pages, rich animations, creative graphics, accessibility at scale. This goes beyond what makes sense to do with website builders. With higher budgets, these projects also call for advanced animations and creative 3D/WebGL experiences.

2. Product → two focus areas here: the "polish" of the user interface (motion, micro-interactions / the stuff that's challenging to hand off from design to engineering) and design systems, which accelerate design and facilitate the handoff. Product design engineers do whatever it takes to steward product quality > a mix of frontend, graphics, UX, UI, and motion design skills.

3. R&D → building prototypes of new things, visualizing and testing new products in the real world. These jobs are rarer, found at larger companies. As Mehmet notes from his own 10 years of R&D: "It's the Wild West / you have to draw quickly." Worth knowing: R&D is the first thing to get cut when companies face distress.

4. Founding → this is the one that gets me excited. The founding design engineer can execute UX, growth, and brand identity as well as product-building. Mehmet argues that all the internet-famous software solopreneurs > Pieter Levels, Danny Postma, Marc Louvion < are essentially design engineers: they don't only build, they also publish themselves, handling UX design and marketing alongside their core engineering work.

Google describes the role more broadly as "the glue between design and engineering." One of their UX Engineers, Tyler F, said: "You'll never have the same day. One day you might design an animation for an app, and the next day, you might write a machine learning algorithm."

Vercel frames it slightly differently > they say their design engineers "skip the traditional handoff process." Instead of a designer finishing a mockup and throwing it over the wall, a designer sketches the start and iterates with a design engineer in Figma or code to produce the final thing. From idea to production.

Same DNA across all four categories: they close the gap others spend months negotiating.

the two lenses > find yourself 🔦

Google breaks UX Engineering into two concentrations, and I think this is really helpful for anyone trying to figure out where they fit:

🎨 design lens → stronger in visual design, interaction, prototyping. still codes.

⚙️ engineering lens → stronger in frontend architecture, performance, systems. still designs.

both share the same core: programming fundamentals + strong UX advocacy + the ability to speak pixels AND code.

outside Google, you'll also see:

→ product design engineers > work on design systems, UI components, ship directly to product

→ marketing design engineers > build landing pages, launch experiences, push CSS/WebGL/animation boundaries

→ autonomous design engineers > sketch it in Figma or code, get feedback, ship it. no handoff needed.

the point: there's more than one way into this. You don't have to be a full-stack unicorn 🦄 (although some in my community called them exactly that, haha). You have to care about both sides enough to bridge them.

what about AI? (this is where it gets really interesting)

here's the thing. The design engineer isn't a product of AI. But AI has dramatically accelerated both the visibility and the accessibility of the role.

how? By doing something fundamental: blurring the boundaries between what designers and developers can each do.

prompt-to-code tools now allow designers to generate functional code directly from mockups or prompts. Designers are shifting from makers of static visuals to active builders. The barrier to going from idea → working prototype has never been lower.

Louis-Auguste Bacot, a design engineer at Alan (the French digital health insurer), shared a provocative take: he believes that anyone who can't code, understand code, or engage directly with the product will find themselves sidelined within two years.

that's a strong statement and not universally true > context matters a lot. But directionally? I think he's pointing at something real. The "I just do Figma files" era is closing.

the skills

Let's get practical. Here's what the stack looks like for most design engineers:

design side: Figma, typography, layout, color, interaction design, motion design

code side: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Tailwind, animation libraries (Framer Motion, GSAP), Next.js

meta skills: design systems thinking, accessibility, performance, cross-functional communication

you'll notice: no CS degree required. Frank Bach studied at an art school. Google's own UX Engineers have cited paths through graphic design, architecture, even MBAs. The path is non-linear, and that's the beauty of it.

how to become one

as Mehmet puts it honestly: "there are very few educational programs and resources that specifically teach software design engineering. Most software design engineers learn by dual-classing: separately learning design and software engineering." Right now, it's a unique opportunity for creative self-learners.

if you're a designer:

→ learn HTML, CSS, and basic React. build your portfolio site from scratch — not in a template builder. the learning is in the struggle.

→ rebuild UIs you admire until you understand the code behind the polish.

→ start prototyping in code instead of only in Figma. that mental shift is the real transition.

→ tools like Figma Make can also help you start exploring this bridge between design and code. if you're already living in Figma (and let's be honest, you are), it can be a natural stepping stone into understanding how your designs translate into real, buildable components. it doesn't replace learning to code — but it gives you a way to start thinking in code terms while staying in a familiar environment.

If you're a developer:

→ study typography, spacing, color theory. develop your eye.

→ care about details nobody asked you to care about. the :active state. the animation curve. the micro-interaction that makes something feel alive.

→ I love how Paco Coursey (design engineer at Linear, previously Vercel) put it: "copy and re-implement work you admire until you can proudly create for yourself."

start small > prototype one thing in code that you would normally only mock up > see how it changes your thinking. 🌱

resources to start 📚

I curated a list of the best starting points > combining my own picks with recommendations from Mehmet's article:

the essential reads:

→ Design Engineering 101 by M.A. Baytaş — the reference article.

→ "The Design Engineer Symptom" by Anna Lefour — the best recent deep-dive on what this role reveals about the industry

→ Google Design on Medium: "What Does a UX Engineer Do?" — a meditation on the many hats UXEs wear

→ Vercel's blog: "Design Engineering at Vercel" — behind the scenes of one of the most prominent DE teams

→ my earlier AI Goodies episode: Emerging + Future Design Roles

learn to code (for designers):

→ Harvard's CS50 — programming from the ground up, one of the best courses in the world

→ The Odin Project — free, highly acclaimed web development curriculum

→ freeCodeCamp — free, comprehensive, community-driven

→ UI Engineering 101 for Designers — by Mariana Castilho and Derek Briggs, focused on frontend "polish"

→ Scrimba — the most innovative online coding school

→ Frontend Masters "Design to Code" path — structured learning path from design to implementation

learn design (for developers):

→ Refactoring UI — one of the most efficient textbooks on interface design

→ Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton — typography and layout theory, demystified

→ Awwwards Academy — visual design and creative skills by seasoned professionals

animation + motion:

→ Animations on the Web by Emil Kowalski — cutting-edge course on web animation by a design engineer at Linear

find jobs + people:

→ designengineer.io — dedicated job board for design engineering roles

→ design-engineers.vercel.app — curated list of design engineers to follow

→ uxe.withgoogle.com — Google's UX Engineering page + open roles

follow for ongoing learning:

→ Design Discipline by M.A. Baytaş — independent design research, Substack + podcast + YouTube

→ Maggie Appleton's Collection of Design Engineers — a great curated list

closing thoughts

when I look at the comments from my recent Instagram carousel on this topic, I see a community that's hungry for clarity. People asking "can we call them designeers?" and "wasn't it unicorn designer?" and a UX lead from Microsoft confirming "we have been hiring this role. definitely on the rise."

the confusion is inevitable > it means the role is still being shaped > and that means you can shape it too.

the design engineer isn't about abandoning design for code, but more about refusing to accept that designing something beautiful and building something real should be two separate acts.

and in a world where AI is collapsing the distance between imagination and implementation, I think this might be the most important direction a designer can take right now.

do you think we'll still call ourselves "designers" in two years? I'm super curious. 👀
hit reply and tell me. 💋

💡 want to learn more about the future of design roles?

Take my course on AI for Designers with The Interaction Design Foundation. 👇

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