Senior Design Engineer, Design Operations: AI-Powered Design Platform

Why this role matters

Great design at enterprise scale isn't just about craft,  it's about the tooling, automation, and guardrails that let a design org move fast and stay consistent. At Celonis, that machine now runs on AI: designers use AI coding agents and generation tools every day, and our design system is being made agent-ready so those tools produce on-brand, accessible work by default.

This role sits at the intersection of design, engineering, and product. You'll design and build the platform that makes all of this work,  the internal tooling, automation, and agent-pipeline infrastructure behind our design practice, bringing real UX judgment to tools the design org actually uses, and governing how AI is used safely and measurably. It's a senior, hands-on role for someone who designs and builds tools, not just processes.

About the team

You'll join the team that owns Celonis's design system and the operations behind how design gets done. We turn a talented group of designers into a high-performing, consistent practice — and increasingly, we integrate AI tooling into every step of the workflow without sacrificing quality, security, or brand integrity.

What you'll do

• Design and build internal tools and automations with strong UX, so the design org's own tooling is genuinely usable, not just functional, using TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, APIs, and the Figma plugin/REST APIs.
• Engineer the agent pipeline: stand up and maintain the MCP servers, context pipelines, and integrations that connect the design system to AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, v0, Copilot).
• Automate governance-as-code: build CI checks, release automation, and policy enforcement so standards are guardrails in the pipeline rather than docs nobody reads.
• Own and govern the AI tool stack: evaluate, integrate, license, and roll out tools, and partner with security and legal on data/IP review and human-in-the-loop checkpoints.
• Instrument and report on impact: build telemetry and dashboards for design-system and AI-tool adoption, cycle time, and quality that leadership actually uses.
• Collaborate with designers, PMs, and engineers to derive and evolve the design system and the workflows around it.
• Build prompt and template infrastructure, reusable prompts, specs, and starter kits, so AI-assisted quality is consistent across the org.
• Set tooling and operations standards, lead platform initiatives, and mentor designers and engineers across the practice.

What you'll bring

• Around 5–8 years across design engineering, front-end, design-systems tooling, or platform/internal-tools engineering, with genuine design/UX sensibility, not engineering-only.
• Good UX instincts: you can design a usable tool and translate ambiguous needs into thoughtful solutions, with a foundation in HTML/CSS and front-end craft.
• Strong engineering skills, comfortable building real tools and automations (TypeScript/JavaScript and/or Python), working with APIs, CI/CD, and integrations.
• Solid working knowledge of Figma at an organizational level and its plugin/REST APIs.
• A track record of measurably improving how a design or product team works through tooling and automation.
• Hands-on fluency with AI tooling and a thoughtful, responsible point of view on governing it at work.
• A strong product mindset and bias toward ownership, plus the communication and leadership of a senior IC.

Bonus points

• Experience building or operating MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers or similar AI integration infrastructure.
• Experience standing up AI tool governance (access, licensing, security/IP review, usage policy) at org scale.
• Familiarity with design tokens and Code Connect, including Angular/TypeScript and CSS custom properties, enough to keep the agent-ready pipeline healthy.
• Experience building dashboards / telemetry for tooling adoption and impact.
• Background supporting design in complex B2B / enterprise or data-heavy environments.

How we work

This is a senior role: you'll own major areas of our tooling and platform with full autonomy, design and build with a high bar, set the standards others rely on, lead initiatives, and mentor. We value people who bring AI into the workflow thoughtfully: faster and safer, never at the cost of quality or trust.

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