Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. NPR is a thriving, mission-driven multimedia organization producing award-winning content. They are seeking a Senior Design Engineer to bridge design strategy and engineering execution, optimizing workflows for their content creators.
Responsibilities
- Design-to-Engineering Translation: Bridge the gap between product design and engineering execution by translating high-level product strategy into clean, component-based wireframes and technical user experience pathways
- Rapid Prototyping: Build functional, high-fidelity interactive code prototypes to validate design concepts with content creators and stakeholders before final development
- Front-End Integration: Write production-ready front-end code, establishing standard styling patterns and providing immediate technical design resolutions to developers to optimize development cycles
- Workflow Optimization: Embed deeply within the Nexus and Grove CMS ecosystems, engineering faster, highly efficient publishing workflows customized to our editorial workflows
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner directly with Product Managers, UX Designers, and engineering teams to co-develop functional requirements that maximize platform usability
- Design Cohort Engagement: Actively participate in NPR's broader design cohort, collaborating with specialists from NPR’s Product and Audience Technology (PAT) teams to scale design best practices
- Editorial & Creative Alignment: Work closely with NPR Editorial, Programming, and Music teams to maintain a deep operational understanding of publishing, distribution, and audience engagement requirements
- User Advocacy: Champion intuitive usability for both internal content creators and external public media audiences, ensuring that development paths prioritize user needs over technical convenience
Skills
- 5+ years of experience working in a hybrid UX Engineering, Design Technology, or Front-End Development role
- Demonstrated portfolio of designing user-centered digital systems and publishing products at scale
- Proven technical experience translating abstract design concepts into structured front-end development requirements
- Excellent cross-functional communication and collaboration skills, with a track record of building alignment across editorial, design, and engineering cohorts
- Strong technical aptitude, including the ability to actively participate in systems architecture, development tradeoff discussions, and release planning
- Experience operating within digital media, journalism, or highly content-rich digital ecosystems
- Advanced Front-End Development: Highly proficient in HTML5, CSS/SCSS, and modern JavaScript frameworks (such as Angular or React)
- Prototyping Software: Expert level execution in Figma, creating everything from wireframes to highly interactive, micro-interaction models
- Systems Thinking: Strong ability to conceptualize, scale, and document complex web layouts, information architectures, and modular component structures
- Web Accessibility Standard Compliance: Thorough understanding of WCAG 2.1 AA standards and semantic front-end coding best practices to ensure digital accessibility
- Strategic Collaboration: Excellent listening and facilitation skills to negotiate requirements between technical engineers and creative editorial staff
- Bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer Science, Interaction Design, or a related field (or equivalent professional experience)
- Prior experience working within complex headless CMS architectures or multi-platform digital publishing environments
- Deep understanding of enterprise-level design systems, token management, and scalable component libraries
- Experience working in public media, collaborative networks, or union-represented engineering environments
Benefits
- NPR provides comprehensive benefits for employees and dependents.
- Regular, full-time employees scheduled to work 30 hours or more per week are eligible to enroll in NPR’s benefits options.
- Benefits include access to health and wellness, paid time off, and financial well-being.
- Plan options include medical, dental, vision, life/ accidental death and dismemberment, long-term disability, short-term disability, and voluntary retirement savings to all eligible NPR employees.
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