About the role

THE WORLD’S MOST ADVANCED VPN, AND A WHOLE LOT MORE. If you’re a curious problem-solver who carves their own path, join the team behind Threat Protection Pro, the NordLynx protocol, and the fastest VPN on the planet—tools that put privacy, security, and control back in people’s hands. Your impact? Helping millions take back control of their online security, privacy, and data. We are looking for a passionate and skilled Design Engineer to join our Design Engineering team. You will build on and evolve Aurora, NordSecurity's multi-brand, multi-platform design system. Our system ships as multiple kits across multiple rendering stacks: ReactKit and AstroKit on the web, and AppKit on all other native implementations. If you thrive at the intersection of design and code, treat the last 10% of polish as your actual job, and are excited about rebuilding design workflows around AI rather than bolting AI onto old ones, this role is for you. MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES - Develop, maintain, and evolve Aurora component kits: ReactKit, AstroKit, and AppKit - going deep on whichever kit the roadmap needs while keeping component contracts consistent across all of them. - Contribute to Aurora's visual and interaction language: component anatomy, variants, states, interaction behavior, and motion, in Figma and in code, often moving between the two in the same working session. - Build internal design tooling: Figma plugins, CLI utilities, CI checks, prototyping tools and other ai-native workflows. - Evangelize & Innovate: Champion best practices and drive the adoption of design automation, tooling (like Storybook), and testing strategies within the design engineering context. - Enable Teams: Guide, train, and support product development teams in effectively adopting and utilizing the Aurora design system. - Bridge Design & Code: Actively participate in the design process, providing technical input, prototyping interactions, and translating design concepts into polished, interactive, and performant UI components (the "front-of-the-frontend"). - Craft Interactions: Implement engaging animations and micro-interactions to enhance user experience, especially for key user-facing elements. - Ensure Accessibility: Build and maintain accessible components, ensuring compliance with relevant standards (e.g., WCAG AA) to create inclusive experiences. - Technical Ownership: Own the technical implementation and architecture of the design system components, ensuring high standards for code quality, performance, and design fidelity. CORE REQUIREMENTS - Design System Expertise: Proven experience building, maintaining, and scaling design systems. Deep understanding of design system principles, component architecture, and token strategies. - Design Craft: Strong product design fundamentals, visual hierarchy, typography, spacing, and interaction design. Able to make sound design decisions independently and contribute to design, not just implement it. - Front-End Proficiency: Strong command of Javascript, modern CSS (including TailwindCSS), and semantic HTML. Demonstrated ability to become productive in an unfamiliar stack quickly. - Figma fluency: variables, component architecture, accurate design-to-code translation; Plugin API or MCP experience is a strong signal. - Tooling: Advanced knowledge and practical experience with Storybook.js for component development, documentation, and testing. - Collaboration Skills: Excellent ability to collaborate effectively across disciplines (design, engineering, product) and drive adoption of best practices. - Design Tool Familiarity: Experience working with design tools like Figma, translating designs accurately into code. BONUS POINTS FOR: - Experience shipping in more than one technology already. Web plus any native platform. (WPF experience is rare and especially valuable to us.) - Astro or another islands/SSG framework in production. - Shipped Figma plugins or REST API integrati