Porter — Design Engineer

Type: Full-time | On-site (5 days/week) | New York City, NY Compensation: $200,000–$280,000 + competitive equity Hiring count: 1 Visa sponsorship: None Available Reports to: Justin, Co-Founder & Design Lead

About Porter

Porter is the cloud platform for modern tech companies — the power of the cloud without the complexity or cost, letting the next generation of builders run anything, anywhere. It lets top engineering teams instantly create production-grade infrastructure on any cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP), deploy their application code, and monitor and manage it, so they can focus on building product instead of managing infrastructure.

Founded: 2020 | Team size: 11–50 | Funding: Series A (profitable; 8x ARR growth since 2022) Industry: Developer infrastructure / Tech for Tech Website: porter.run Office: New York City (HQ) + San Francisco

Why Candidates Should Join

• Own the craft end-to-end: Not a handoff role — you design it, you implement it, you own it, from micro-interactions and core flows to a full rebrand rollout.
• Direct founder collaboration: Work directly with Justin (Co-Founder & Design Lead); the closest reference point for the type of person they want is Vercel's design engineering team.
• Full autonomy: No product team — engineers own the full development lifecycle, talk to customers directly, and decide what to build, in two-week project cycles.

Intake Call Summary

• No text intake summary is present on the role page. An intake video is posted but was not transcribed — request the intake notes or transcript from Contrario if a summary is needed to finalize scoring.

The Role

Porter is hiring a Design / Micro-Interaction Engineer to own the craft and feel of the Porter platform — information architecture, core product flows, micro-interactions, and a full rebrand rollout. This is not a handoff role: you design it, you implement it, you own it.

What You'll Be Doing

• Own design and front-end implementation of core Porter product flows end-to-end
• Lead the rebrand rollout across the Porter website and product
• Define information architecture and design, create and monitor flows for the platform's main objects
• Work directly with Justin to align on design sense, then go above and beyond it
• Loop into in-flight work streams, give design feedback, and progressively take on owned projects
• Talk to customers directly and bring product intuition to what gets built
• Work in two-week project cycles with full autonomy to propose and drive your own work

Tech stack: Figma + hands-on front-end implementation in code (specific framework/stack not stated on the role page).

Requirements

• 5+ years design or micro-interaction engineering experience with a portfolio demonstrating craft and curiosity
• Comfortable implementing designs in code, not just Figma — an independent force who polishes the product without needing frontend engineer bandwidth
• Pre-AI technical frontend experience who actually understands the code they're pushing
• AI-native mindset, uses AI to move faster
• Based in or relocating to New York City
• Before sourcing, review the ideal portfolio list curated by Porter's. Submitted candidates must have a portfolio on par with those in the list, portfolios should not look vibe-coded, must show unique design sensibility, and clean, intentional execution.

Green Flags

• Portfolio demonstrates genuine taste and craft, not just technical execution, this is the primary filter
• Background at Vercel, Linear, or a developer tooling company with strong design engineering culture
• Excited about implementing their own designs using AI tools without waiting on engineering
• Can name a collaborator who was better than them, signals low ego and team orientation
• Has shipped micro-interactions and polished product experiences to real users in production
• Genuine curiosity about dev tooling and cloud infrastructure, not just interested in the design problem

Red Flags

• No portfolio or weak portfolio, non-starter
• Expects to hand off Figma files without being involved in implementation
• Not excited about using AI to accelerate design output
• Cannot name a collaborator who impressed them, usually signals ego and poor teamwork
• Under 5 years of experience
• Team's current frontend engineer needs to review every single microinteraction pr they put together

Role Details

Salary$200,000–$280,000EquityCompetitive / meaningful equityOn-site policyFully in-person, 5 days/weekVisa sponsorshipNone AvailableEmployment typeFull-timeLocationNew York City, NY

Benefits & Perks: Meaningful equity · 30 days PTO · 30 days remote per year · Relocation covered · On-site work trial paid

Screening Questions

• None provided on the role page.

Interview Process

Stage 1 — Pending Approval — Candidates awaiting initial approval. Stage 2 — Intro with Justin — First conversation with the Co-Founder / Design Lead. Stage 3 — Second RoundStage 4 — Two-day on-siteStage 5 — Intro with Justin — Second touch with Justin (as listed on the page). Stage 6 — Offer ExtendedStage 7 — Candidate Hired — Candidate accepts and starts.

Ideal Companies & Backgrounds

No dedicated Ideal Companies section on the role page. Per Green Flags, target Vercel, Linear, and developer-tooling companies with a strong design-engineering culture.

Ideal Candidate Profiles — DO NOT CONTACT

Porter's curated portfolio benchmark. Do not source or contact these people — use only as the bar that submitted portfolios must match (see Requirement 6).

• Gustavo Rodrigues
• Kevin C
• Pauline Wee
• Roby Saavedra
• Preet Suthar

(No LinkedIn URLs provided on the role page.)