Design Engineer

About Us

Base Compute is an AI inference lab. Our mission is to bring AGI on device. We believe in a world where everyone has access to intelligence: fast, private and always available on your device.

We’re building the end-to-end stack that makes local AI powerful, from GPU optimization and inference engines to customized agentic experiences that run directly on users’ hardware.

The Role

The way we interact with software is fundamentally changing right now. Most products are simply plugging AI into interfaces designed for a different era. We’re building new ones, designed around what models can actually do and what becomes possible when agentic AI runs on your own device: always-on intelligence that’s private and works offline.

We’re looking for a Design Engineer to help invent those interfaces. You’ll have the taste to know what great software feels like and the engineering skills to ship it. You’ll own our product’s frontend and have direct influence on how people experience our technology.

What You’ll Work On

• New AI interfaces: Inventing patterns for working with models and agents, from streaming long running tasks to handling mistakes and giving users the right amount of control
• Product and interaction design: Taking features from rough idea to polished interface, designing flows and interactions yourself
• Frontend engineering: Building our product’s interface end-to-end, from component architecture to performance
• Design systems: Creating a component library and visual language that keeps the product consistent as it grows

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years building production frontends, with a portfolio that shows strong visual and product taste
• Expertise in TypeScript and React (or similar), plus strong skills in typography, layout, interaction design and Figma (or similar)
• Hands-on experience building products on top of LLMs
• Ownership: you take ambiguous problems from first sketch to shipped feature
• Clear communication: you explain design decisions simply and give honest feedback
• Nice-to-haves: animation or creative coding, desktop app frameworks (Electron, Tauri, SwiftUI)

What We Offer

• Equity and strong base salary
• Direct influence on how people experience AI
• Genuinely hard problems that haven't been solved yet
• Small team, fast iteration, low bureaucracy

Location

The team is based in Melbourne and Berlin and works in-person from the office most days. We require strong written and spoken English, since the team collaborates across time zones.