Job Description
Design Engineer (AI Products) – National News Platform
Day rate: £650 (Inside IR35)
Duration: 6 months
Location: Central London (Hybrid – 3 office days)
We’re looking for a Design Engineer with strong UX/UI craft, interaction design expertise, and front‑end product-building experience to redefine the future of AI‑driven digital experiences for a major national news platform used by millions.
This is not a backend engineering role.
This is a role for someone who lives at the intersection of product design and front‑end engineering. Someone who cares deeply about user experience, visual quality, interaction detail, and how design translates into a real shipped product.
You’ll prototype new concepts in Figma, validate interactions rapidly, and bring them to life with polished, production-ready UI. You’ll collaborate with product designers, UX researchers, and engineering leads to shape AI‑powered interfaces that feel intuitive, elegant, and deeply user‑centred.
You’ll Thrive Here If You…
* Are a designer‑builder who loves crafting beautiful interfaces and then bringing them to life in code
* Obsess over interaction design, micro‑interactions, and user flow improvements
* Have strong opinions on layout, hierarchy, typography, visual polish, and motion
* Can translate complex AI capabilities into clear, human‑centred UX
* Think like a Product Designer but build like a UI Engineer
* Believe great design is measured by how it ships, not just how it looks in a file
What You’ll Do
* Design and build AI‑powered user experiences, focusing on clarity, usability, and interaction quality
* Prototype rapidly in Figma, exploring content discovery, search, summarisation, and intelligent UI behaviour
* Translate prototypes into high‑quality React interfaces
* Work hands‑on with design systems to create accessible, scalable, reusable UI components
* Collaborate with designers to test, refine, and elevate user journeys
* Bring AI capabilities (LLMs, RAG, embeddings) to life in a way that feels natural and user‑first
* Influence product direction by demonstrating what’s possible through UX‑led prototypes
Essential Requirements:
* Strong UX/UI and interaction design background — with a portfolio showing shipped, consumer-facing digital products
* Experience building rich, interactive UIs in React
* A designer’s eye for detail: spacing, motion, feedback, clarity, and hierarchy
* Ability to take an ambiguous user problem and shape it into an elegant, thoughtful experience
* Experience integrating AI/LLM features into user interfaces
* Comfortable owning a feature end‑to‑end, from concept sketches to polished UI
Your ideas could shape how millions experience the news. If you’re ready to build what’s next, please apply with an up-to-date CV to get a conversation rolling.