Staff Software Engineer, Design Systems

Job Description

Job Summary

Zendesk is looking for an experienced and motivated software engineer who is deeply passionate about systems to help evolve our React based Design System called “Garden”! You’ll partner with our talented designers and engineers on high impact UI work used by all Zendesk product teams to deliver accessible, consistent, and expressive products. 

The ideal candidate is a creative individual that values quality, consistency, and delight. You naturally encourage collaboration and have the ability to remain flexible enough to accommodate critique and change.

What you’ll be doing

• Evolve and maintain Garden design system based on priority business needs and evolving customer use cases

• Craft and build internal tooling and libraries to optimize developer efficiency, and increase code reliability and performance

• Partner with product, design and architect peers to drive and solve complex technical problems

• Provide technical expertise to global Zendesk product teams who use Garden as their UI foundation

• Lead and mentor engineering team on excellent code habits and disciplined testing to ensure scalability and reliability

• Be self-directed and take a lead role on requirements, implementation and delivery, as well as consulting with adopting teams

• Balance individual contribution with time spent mentoring and helping team members succeed

• Bring good vibes to the larger team

What you bring to the role

Basic Qualifications:

• 7+ years of frontend software engineering experience with strong capabilities in modern frontend tech stacks (React, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and testing (unit and functional)

• 1-2 years of experience contributing to a design system or a UI platform team

• Experience with creating thoughtful component APIs that are well-designed, easy-to-consume, and carefully documented

• Perpetual curiosity around the continuously evolving React ecosystem including patterns,tooling and industry trends

• Clear understanding of accessibility guidelines and experience building accessible UI (our baseline standard is WCAG 2.1 AA)

• Excellent collaboration skills and a systematic, data-driven approach to problem solving

• Familiarity with continuous integration (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, etc), testing libraries and peripheral tools like Storybook, Figma, and NPM

• Full-stack development in one or a combination of Node.js-, Ruby-, or Python-based application frameworks

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Past contributions to open source software.

Tech Stack

The Garden Design System team builds using TypeScript/JavaScript, React, and CSS and has a Gatsby-powered site for documentation. The teams that consume Garden leverage a range of frameworks including React, Ember and Angular.

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The US annualized base salary range for this position is $158,000.00-$238,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

The intelligent heart of customer experience
Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love. We advocate for digital first customer experiences—and we stick with it in our workplace. Over 5,000 employees worldwide are collaborating from kitchen tables, home offices, coworking spaces, and Zendesk workspaces to make one team.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer