Staff Frontend Engineer (Design Systems & UX)
Deep Origin · South San Francisco, CA
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Jul 16, 2026
South San Francisco, CA
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A staff-level frontend engineering role at a life science platform startup, focused on architecting and shipping React/TypeScript interfaces for complex scientific workflows — think multi-step simulation pipelines, molecular viewers, and data-heavy research tools. Because there is no dedicated design team, this engineer also owns interaction design and UX decisions, shaping component systems and usability standards alongside writing production code. Suits a senior IC with both deep frontend architecture experience and strong product judgment.
Staff level · 7+ years · San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 280 people in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 210–370
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $190,744 (middle half $167,095–$224,501).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The JD explicitly states 7+ years building production web applications as the role-level experience requirement; this is captured as total experience, not tied to any single technology.
Data visualization is listed in the Requirements section with the specific qualifier 'past the standard chart library, where the visualization is the interface' — this signals a hard gate on non-trivial visualization work, not just familiarity with charting libraries.
Mol*, NGL, and 3Dmol.js are listed together under Nice to have as interchangeable molecular visualization libraries; they are consolidated into one preferred skill with alternatives.
WebGL appears under Nice to have alongside the molecular visualization libraries and is kept as a separate preferred skill since it is a distinct underlying technology.
Experience with scientific/biotech software and background in computational chemistry/biology/physics are listed under Nice to have as domain knowledge rather than named technologies, so they are omitted from the skills list per extraction rules.
Experience establishing design patterns without dedicated designers is listed under Nice to have as a methodology/responsibility rather than a named technology, so it is omitted.
No compensation figures are provided beyond 'competitive compensation package with meaningful equity.'
Read the full posting
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