Senior Design Engineer, Content Production Technology

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

Requirements:

• 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