Design Engineer at Pace in New York, NY

Pace is the AI operations partner for the world's leading insurers. We combine the speed of AI agents with expert review by our insurance operations team to automate insurance tasks. Almost $400bn per year is spent on outsourcing in financial services outsourcing every year. We’re here to change that working side-by-side with some of the largest companies in the world.

Role

We're looking for our first Design Engineer to bridge design and code. You'll shape how Pace looks, feels, and works - and ship it.

What makes a Design Engineer different from a Product Designer?

Both roles care deeply about craft, systems thinking, and user experience. The difference is that you don't stop at the design file. You prototype quickly, contribute directly to the codebase, and bring your own designs to production. You're a designer with a frontend engineering habit - you can't help but build.

What this looks like in practice:

• Own end-to-end design from discovery through delivery, talking regularly to internal users, customers, and stakeholders to understand problems, then shipping solutions
• Prototype in code, creating interactive designs that can evolve directly into production rather than staying in the design tool
• Independently ship UI/UX fixes and polish to production, bringing consistency across the product
• Use your technical foundation to build and maintain a cohesive design system, identifying patterns across feature requests to create foundational solutions rather than one-offs
• Experiment constantly - tinkering and shipping new UI/UX to improve the customer experience, add delightful moments, and push the product forward

You're a great fit if you:

• Thrive in ambiguity and high-autonomy environments. You've operated without a heavy process and delivered strong outcomes. You're energized by figuring things out.
• Think in systems. You build design languages, not just designs, spotting through-lines across unrelated requests and turning them into foundational solutions that scale.
• Have taste. Your work shows intentionality and an eye for detail, and you can articulate why you made the choices you made.
• Are a strong collaborator who balances design and customer problems with engineering practices. You're shipping production code, not just prototypes.
• Are comfortable working in a production codebase (we use React/TypeScript)
• Move fast with a bias toward action - you set the pace, not just keep up with it
• Are excited to build an AI-native product. You've built AI products either professionally or on the side before and are thinking about how the latest capabilities can become products in users' hands

Bonus:

• Startup background or founder experience
• Have an engineering background - whether frontend experience (intern+) or CS coursework
• Stay current with frontend engineering trends

Team characteristics

The Pace team has a couple of defining characteristics:

1. Integrity: The most important thing is working with good people who want to have a massive impact on the world. Our team genuinely wants to do the best work of their careers and know it’ll take 5-10 years of focus to deliver.
2. Ambition: The ambition for this company is not just a good vertical AI business but a $100bn+ outcome across vertical services. We’re looking for people that rise that level of ambition. Often times this means they want to be the best at what they do, become leaders at scale or one day start their own company. Pace will be the best place to learn, deliver impact and advance your path to do something great.

At Pace, we're building a talent-dense team where teammates grow into leaders. This might mean growing into a world-class IC, owning a line of business, or leading teams. Whichever your path, we want to support you to grow at Pace and beyond for the long-term.

We're a <20 person team based in-person in New York and are lucky to be perfectly positioned with leading customers and top investors to make a real impact on one of the largest industries in the world.