Design Engineer - Frontend & Product

About the role

Base Compute is an AI inference lab building an end-to-end stack for local AI, from GPU optimization and inference engines to agentic experiences that run on users' devices. It is looking for a Design Engineer to invent the interfaces for its product, owning the frontend and having direct influence on how users experience the technology. The team is based in Melbourne and Berlin and works in person from the office most days.

Key responsibilities

• Create new AI interfaces, inventing patterns for working with models and agents, from streaming long-running tasks to handling mistakes and giving users the right amount of control.
• Turn features from rough ideas into polished interfaces, designing flows and interactions yourself.
• Build the product's interface end-to-end, from component architecture to performance.
• Create a component library and visual language so the product stays consistent as it grows.

Required profile

• 3+ years building production frontends, with a portfolio showing strong visual and product taste.
• Experience building products on top of LLMs.
• Ability to take ambiguous problems from first sketch to shipped feature.
• Clear communication: explaining design decisions simply and giving honest feedback.
• Strong written and spoken English, as the team collaborates across time zones.

Required skills

• TypeScript and React (or similar).
• Typography, layout, interaction design and Figma (or similar).
• Nice to have: animation or creative coding, desktop app frameworks such as Electron, Tauri or SwiftUI.

What we offer

• Equity and a strong base salary.
• Direct influence on how people experience AI.
• Genuinely hard problems that haven't been solved yet.
• A small team, fast iteration and low bureaucracy.