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Hi 👋🏾 I’m Abhik, Ashby's Co-Founder and VP of Engineering. This role is close to my heart because, as someone who can both design and code, it’s where I’ve always done my best work, but also where I was seen as a rebel and an outsider. I want folks like me to feel at home at Ashby, and so I made Design Engineering a formal role and department that works closely with me. Our first hire was over five years ago, and we’re doubling the team from five to over ten in the next year.
This role truly expects you to design and code. Design Engineer at Ashby isn’t just a Frontend Engineer with new branding, nor is it a Designer vibe coding prototypes. Combining excellence in both is where magic happens. I found that when I put my best effort into both the design and technical implementation of a feature, I had a nimbleness and creativity that was hard to achieve when I did only one or the other. For instance, the UX and UI I envisioned often influenced the data model's design and flexibility, while the understanding of technology's capabilities often simplified or improved the design. This role embraces that.
You’ll work on our most challenging design problems, help others improve their designs by expanding and enhancing our in-house design system, and consult on bespoke design work needed by Product Engineers. To ground it with examples, Design Engineers at Ashby have:
The Design Engineer role is more common today than five years ago, but I believe Ashby offers a unique opportunity that few can match:
Design Engineers come in many flavors, not all of which fit our model. Here are some reasons you might not enjoy the role:
We’ve posted levels from Junior to Staff. The higher the level, the more experience and alignment with the role we expect when reviewing your application and while interviewing. Please apply to the one that sets the right expectations.
Internally, we do not use these titles, but Engineers are leveled based on proficiency (which you can read about here).
As engineers, we are used to tooling that makes us better at what we do. When we started Ashby, we saw the opposite with Talent Acquisition software. Recruiting teams were leveling up how they did their work, but instead of software meeting this new standard, it held them back.
Scheduling a final round is an excellent example. Recruiting teams wanted to schedule candidates faster, track interviewer preparation and quality, and do it with half the headcount. A recruiter needed to manually collect availability from the candidate, identify qualified interviewers, perform “Calendar Tetris” to find who is available to interview the candidate, schedule on the earliest date possible, and make any last-minute adjustments as availability changed. They must do this while considering the interview load on each individual and whether interviewers need to be trained and shadowing others. 🥵 TA software didn’t help.
As hiring managers, we know TA is a critical function, and as engineers, we know software can do better. So, we built and continue to build Ashby to give TA teams the highest standard of tooling. Software that’s intelligent and powerful. Software that provides insights into where they’re failing and automates or simplifies many of the tasks they’re underwater with. We want other functions and departments to be jealous of what TA teams can do with Ashby, and today they often are!
Our engineering culture is motivated by Benji’s (my Co-founder and CEO) and my belief that a small, talented team, given the right environment, can build high-quality software fast (and work regular hours!). We do it through:
The best engineers we’ve worked with delivered reliably magical outcomes. They took customer problems and relentlessly drove them to solutions that were not only successful but often brilliant and creative. While they did this with minimal oversight, stakeholders were never in the dark as to what was going on, and no setback was a surprise.
Traditional product-development processes aren’t meant for the best engineers. Their purpose is to create consistent outcomes regardless of the engineer’s skill. But, consistency comes at the expense of an engineer’s time and freedom—both ingredients necessary to generate those magical outcomes. As a result, process stifles the best engineers and doesn’t give others the opportunity to practice the behaviors that made the best engineers the “best.”
At Ashby, we want to build an environment that encourages every engineer to be their best. So, at Ashby, every Engineer runs their project. Product Managers (and Designers) build strategy, do customer research, and hand off problem briefs to Engineers. Engineers take on the rest: they research the problem, write product specs, build wireframes, and implement their solution end-to-end. We rely on engineers, not process, to push information outward to the relevant folks (e.g., Product Managers) and pull folks in to help (e.g., Designers, Infra). It’s a new level of ownership for many engineers, but we’d rather an engineer fail a bit and coach up their skills than use process as a crutch. Not everyone succeeds in our culture, but those who do thrive.
Our engineering team consists of lifelong learners who are talented but also humble and kind (meet them here!). These attributes create an environment where collaboration happens naturally. We combine this with research, prototyping, and written proposals to see around corners and get feedback from the team across time zones. Focus time is something that we hold sacred, and, with thoughtful and deliberate communication, engineers are in here).
To drive it home, here's a recent calendar of an engineer who has been with us for over 4 years. ~34 hours of focus time, 2.5h of interviews, and 3.5 hours of meetings:
We also meet in person at least twice a year, once as a department and once as a company. You also have a small budget to meet up with folks in your city/region.
We built Ashby with the quality, breadth, and depth that many customers would expect from much larger teams over larger time scales. We’ve done this through investment in:
Here’s an impromptu quote from Arjun in our company Slack of what it’s like to build a feature at Ashby:
And a demo of one of these building blocks:
Diverse teams drive innovation and better outcomes. Having seen my mother and partner build their careers as minority women in non-diverse fields, I want to make sure Ashby creates opportunities for the next generation of engineers from underrepresented groups.
Today, 25% of engineers and 50% of our engineering leaders at Ashby are from underrepresented groups. We are taking conscious steps to improve, like sourcing diverse candidates, providing generous paid family leave, no leetcode interviews, and more.
At Ashby, our team and interview process want to help you show your best self. We’ll dive into past projects and simulate working together through pair programming, designing, writing design system specs collaboratively, and discussing decisions. There are no leetcode or whiteboard exercises.
Our interview process is three rounds:
Depending on our leadership team’s bandwidth, we may start with an additional 30m screen with a recruiter.
I will be your main point of contact and prep you for interviews. Each round will have written guidance so you know what to expect. You’ll meet 3-4 people in Design Engineering (with 5-15 minutes in each interview to ask them questions). If we don’t give an offer, we’ll provide feedback!
We want an exceptional onboarding experience for every new hire. At Ashby, your dev environment is set up with a single script, you push your first product change on day one, and you spend the rest of your time shipping product changes that give you a tour of our codebase and best practices. The product changes increase in scope and ambiguity from simple copy changes to the delivery of a prominent, impactful feature. Your manager will do a 30, 60, and 90-day review to give feedback and calibrate on how we work together.
It’s a team effort to get you successfully onboarded; you’ll have a peer paired with you to answer questions, pair program, and check in often to see if you need help. The rest of the team will run training sessions on our culture, product, engineering process, and technical architecture.
Our tech stack is TypeScript (frontend & backend), React, GraphQL API, Node.js, Postgres, and Redis. Depending on the level you’re applying for and your past experience, we expect, at a minimum, good proficiency with TypeScript, React, and CSS. Proficiency with backend technologies is a plus, as it allows you to work without coordinating with Product Engineers.
Ashby’s success hinges on hiring great people and creating an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. We’re being deliberate about building that environment from the ground up. I hope that excites you enough to apply.
Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
Ashby is committed to a fair and transparent hiring process. We confirm that this advertisement is for an active, existing vacancy within our organization. Please be advised that we may use artificial intelligence-driven tools to assist our recruitment team in screening, assessing, and selecting candidates for this position.
Health Insurance
Stock Options
Equity / RSUs
401(k) with Matching
Unlimited PTO
Minimum PTO Requirement
Parental Leave
Company Equipment
Learning & Development Budget
Conference Attendance
