Design System Engineer (Staff)

The Role

Pilot’s mission is to be the back office for every small business in America, and we’re hiring a Staff Design System Engineer to help make this future a reality. 

We are giving every SMB the superpowers of a full finance team at a fraction of the cost. These superpowers include having a deep understanding of the financial health of the business, the machinery to constantly improve it, and the predictive abilities to thoughtfully plan for the future. We do this at a fraction of the cost a large company would pay for this, by delivering these capabilities through powerful software. 

All of our teams have unique charters to collectively build the software, services and systems that enable Pilot to deliver a high-quality experience, profitably, at scale. The Infrastructure team accelerates the rest of R&D by providing scalable, efficient, and high-quality building blocks for product development, while also ensuring we can support business growth in a secure and reliable way. The team is responsible for building simple, scalable abstractions and owns the full Infrastructure stack that our systems run on to the product platform that our product engineers use. 

We’re looking for a Design Systems Engineer who bridges design and engineering, owns component quality across Figma, Storybook, and code, and builds scalable, production-ready UI systems.

What You Will Own

• Ownership of our design system across Figma, Storybook, and production code, and supporting the design team in fast prototyping with AI tools
• Stewardship of Storybook as the source of truth for UI components and usage
• Tight alignment between design intent and shipped UI 
• Component quality, consistency, and scalability across the product, and great interfaces that accelerate frontend development

What You Will Do

• Expand the design system to support product, marketing, and AI-ready experiences from a single, shared foundation
• Partner daily with product designers to shape components early, not after the fact
• Partner with frontend engineers to ensure components are easy to adopt and extend
• Build and maintain reusable, accessible UI components in Vue
• Translate design system decisions into clean, documented, production-ready components
• Keep Figma, Storybook, and code in sync and actively close gapsEvolve the design system to be AI-ready, enabling design to prototype faster

What You Bring

• 7+ years of experience as a software engineer
• Strong frontend skills including modern CSS
• Deep experience working with or owning a design system
• Hands-on experience with Storybook in a production environment
• Strong design sensibility and ability to read and challenge design decisions
• Comfort acting as the bridge between design and engineering
• Experience with vibecoding tools or AI-assisted design and development workflows
• Familiarity with MCP or intent-driven UI concepts is a big plus
• Clear communication and a bias toward practical solutions
• This position is only available for remote employment in the United States in the following states: CA, GA, NY, NC, TN, TX, and WA

Why This Role Matters

• You shape how the product UI is built, not just how it looks
• You reduce friction between design and engineering
• You make the design system faster, safer, and easier to scale

About Pilot

Pilot launched in 2017 to bring the back office into the modern era. Pilot provides small businesses with dedicated finance experts - which Pilot hires as full-time, U.S.-based employees - who learn the ins-and-outs of their business. Pilot integrates directly with the billing, banking, expense, and payroll systems customers already use. With a special blend of custom software and expert bookkeepers, Pilot delivers accurate, consistent bookkeeping and financial management and tax services that give entrepreneurs the freedom to focus on their business.

Pilot has over 3,000 customers and has raised over $170 million in financing from Sequoia, Index Ventures, Stripe, Bezos Expeditions, and Whale Rock.  Our investors also include a long list of world-class entrepreneurs, including Patrick and John Collison, Drew Houston, and Diane Greene.  Our most recent funding round doubled our valuation to $1.2 billion – Meet Fintech’s Newest Unicorn.

Why Pilot?

• We invest in our employees’ development and happiness because our employees are the keys to our success and ensuring happy customers
• The opportunity to join a seasoned founding team that has led companies through two prior successful startups and acquisitions (by Oracle and Dropbox).
• Flexible vacation/time-off policy
• All federal holidays are observed
• Competitive benefits package including additional wellness benefits
• Parental leave for birthing or non-birthing parents – 100% pay for 12 weeks
• 401(k) plan

The base pay range target for the role seniority described in this job description is $185,000 - $313,000 in most remote locations, and between $231,000 - $313,000 in San Francisco, CA and New York City, NY. Final offer amounts depend on multiple factors such as candidate experience and expertise, geographic location, total compensation, and market data. In addition to cash pay, full-time regular positions are eligible for equity, 401(k), health benefits, and other benefits; some of these benefits may be available for part-time or temporary positions.

Pilot commits to provide a work environment free of discrimination and harassment, as well as equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. You may view all of Pilot’s recruiting notices here, including our EEO policy, information about requesting a reasonable accommodation in the job application process, recruitment agency policy, recruitment scam notice, and important E-Verify information. You may view our job candidate privacy policy here.

As part of Pilot’s commitment to fair and transparent remote hiring, Pilot uses light identity verification steps, such as briefly waving on camera and/or recording interviews, to confirm that candidates are representing themselves. For some roles, we may also invite finalists to our San Francisco office for onsite interviews.  By clicking “Submit Application” below you consent to our recording of interviews with you if your application goes to the interviews stage.