Design Engineer
Conversion
San Francisco, CA · $175k–$250k a year · Posted October 26, 2026
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Where San Francisco, CA ranks
Where San Francisco, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for security jobs316 openings · of 20
- #1Best cities for technology jobs7,178 openings · of 100
- #1Best cities for financial services pay after cost of living$173k · of 33
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills35% · of 100
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills in the West Coast35% · of 54
- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the West Coast902 jobs · of 47
Rankings about engineering jobs
- Best cities for software and engineering jobs #1 San Francisco (3,412 openings)
- Best cities for engineering pay after cost of living #1 San Mateo ($216k)
- Most requested AI skills in engineering jobs #1 AI tools in daily work (6.1%)
- AI tools named most often in engineering jobs #1 Claude (1.7%)
- Employers with the most engineering jobs #1 Amazon (2,992 roles)
Pay compared with the market
This listing pays about $212,500 a year. Across 29 open design engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $110,000 to $215,000 and the median is $175,000. That is inside the middle half of those listings, 21% above the median.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
How AI is used in this kind of work
AI use among mechanical engineers is little observed so far. Measured exposure for mechanical engineers: 8% (little observed).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
ABOUT US
Conversion is the agentic marketing automation platform for modern enterprises such as Plaid, ClickHouse, Webflow, and Productboard. Our platform lets growth teams run their entire go-to-market motion in one place, from acquisition through retention, with AI agents doing the work that legacy tools like Marketo, HubSpot, and Pardot can't.
We've raised $28M+ from Abstract Ventures, True Ventures, and HOF Capital. The team is based in San Francisco and includes engineers, designers, and operators from Airbnb, Palantir, Pinterest, IMC, Shopify, LinkedIn, and Microsoft.
About the Role
Hey there! James here 👋, co-founder and CTO at Conversion. Just wanted to share my thoughts on the perfect candidate we're looking to join our product team:
- Product focused: There are a lot of features that go into a marketing automation platform, and we're looking for engineers who can own entire products and scope out, design, and build them end to end. We believe the best PMs are engineers who understand the pain point, since they can best evaluate both the benefit and the cost of building a feature.
- Exceptional design taste: We believe great software should be as beautiful and intuitive as it is powerful. We're looking for engineers with an exceptional eye for design who care deeply about how a product looks, feels, and behaves. You'll have the freedom to shape the experience, not just implement someone else's designs.
- Love building for / with customers: We're extremely close with our customers. Every customer gets their own Slack channel in our org, and we add every engineer to the channel to directly answer questions, fix bugs, and ship features. A key component of this role will be working with customers to understand pain points and then researching / designing the product features to solve them!
- Detail oriented: Conversion's product is a deeply integrated platform where each feature must mesh seamlessly with many existing features and support an ambitious vision. A detail oriented approach is required to keep our high bar for craft while delivering complex features in a scalable way.
Concrete Responsibilities:
- Design craft: Own the visual quality of Conversion's product, from typography and spacing to interactions, animations, and the small details that make an interface feel exceptional
- Experience ownership: Translate the complexity of a marketing platform into intuitive, elegant experiences which make powerful features feel simple
- Design to code: Own the entire process from exploring design concepts and prototyping interactions to shipping polished, production-ready React interfaces
This role is in-person 5 days/week in San Francisco.
You Might Be a Good Fit If You
- Have 3+ years of industry experience shipping high quality product experiences
- Have a startup mindset and want early ownership in a fast-paced environment
- Are proficient in React, TypeScript, and CSS, and can turn a design idea into a polished, responsive, production-ready experience
- Can take ambiguous product requirements and independently explore and prototype thoughtful UX solutions
You Might Be a Great Fit If You
- Have worked at a Series A to C startup that scaled quickly
- Enjoy experimenting with new interaction patterns, prototyping ambitious ideas, and novel UI paradigms
- Are the kind of person who notices a slightly misaligned button or an awkward hover state and can't resist making it better
- Have a strong track record of side projects, apps, or hackathons. Our engineers have built a live-streaming security system for their parents' new house, a database from scratch, a better Splitwise app, and hosted our Minecraft server, all while at Conversion
Useful links
- Website: https://conversion.ai/ https://conversion.ai/
- Careers: https://conversion.ai/careers https://conversion.ai/careers
- Next Play article on our team: https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/how-a-big-pivot-helped-this-company https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/how-a-big-pivot-helped-this-company
- Engineering blog: https://conversion.ai/blog https://conversion.ai/blog