Lead Design Engineer

At Braze, we have found our people. We’re a genuinely approachable, exceptionally kind, and intensely passionate crew. We seek to ignite that passion by setting high standards, championing teamwork, and creating work-life harmony as we collectively navigate rapid growth on a global scale while striving for greater equity and opportunity – inside and outside our organization. To flourish here, you must be prepared to set a high bar for yourself and those around you. There is always a way to contribute: Acting with autonomy, having accountability and being open to new perspectives are essential to our continued success. Our deep curiosity to learn and our eagerness to share diverse passions with others gives us balance and injects a one-of-a-kind vibrancy into our culture. If you are driven to solve exhilarating challenges and have a bias toward action in the face of change, you will be empowered to make a real impact here, with a sharp and passionate team at your back. If Braze sounds like a place where you can thrive, we can’t wait to meet you. WHAT YOU'LL DO We’re seeking a Lead Design Engineer to own and evolve Braze’s design system and shared UX foundations. This is a senior individual contributor role responsible for shaping the technical and design direction of our shared UI foundations in close partnership with Engineering. You will operate at the intersection of design and code to ensure our system is robust, scalable, accessible, and implementation-ready across product teams. This role strengthens the connection between design and implementation. You will modernize how our design system is built, documented, validated, and adopted, while driving automation and improving system quality and consistency. You will contribute hands-on while mentoring designers and engineers, raising the bar for accessibility, web standards, CSS practices, interaction quality, and implementation-aware thinking across the UX organization. You will also help future-proof our design system by enabling programmatic access and validation. This includes supporting automation workflows and making system foundations usable through tooling, CLI interfaces, and AI-assisted workflows where appropriate. Responsibilities: Own, in partnership with Engineering, the technical and design direction of the design system, ensuring it scales effectively and remains coherent across product teams Contribute hands-on to system architecture, interaction patterns, documentation, and implementation decisions Define scalable interaction and component patterns that balance usability, clarity, flexibility, performance, and maintainability Strengthen design-to-code alignment by partnering closely with frontend engineers on tokens, semantic HTML, CSS architecture, accessibility standards (WCAG), and implementation practices Champion accessibility, inclusive design, web standards, and modern CSS practices across the UX organization Mentor designers in accessibility, responsive systems, CSS fundamentals, and implementation-aware design thinking Drive automation and tooling that improve workflow efficiency, system compliance, and programmatic access (e.g., APIs, CLI tools, AI-assisted validation) Establish scalable contribution, governance, and release workflows to support adoption and long-term system health Reduce fragmentation, UX debt, and inconsistency across the platform Define and track metrics that measure system quality, accessibility, automation impact, and adoption WHO YOU ARE 5+ years working in design systems, design engineering, or highly technical product design roles within complex SaaS environments Proven track record building, scaling, or modernizing a design system in close partnership with Engineering Strong fluency in frontend fundamentals, including component architecture, semantic HTML, modern CSS practices, responsive systems, accessibility standards (WCAG), and scalable UI patterns Demonstrated design craft judgment, with the ... (truncated, view full listing at source)