Position Summary

We’re hiring an AI Design Engineer to join the team building Momentum. You’re a designer first: you own the user experience and the judgment behind it, from the first rough idea through what ships. What’s different is how you work. Instead of handing off a spec, you sketch the idea, prototype it yourself in code using our existing design system and AI tools, and put it in front of real users before it hardens, often within the same week. There’s no separate design-review gate and no handoff queue, because you’re the one closing the loop between the idea and the shipped experience. You’ll work directly alongside a team of senior engineers and a product manager as one of a small, yet high-impact team.

About Momentum

We believe every donor deserves the kind of personal, well-timed attention a major gift officer gives their top prospects, whether they give $5 or $50 or $5 million. Momentum is Virtuous’s AI-powered portfolio management platform, designed to expand the number of donors receiving real, personal engagement. By integrating seamlessly into the broader Virtuous ecosystem, Momentum helps major gift teams identify who to contact, orchestrate personalized outreach, and automate stewardship—allowing gift officers to focus on building meaningful relationships rather than managing data.

What you’ll do

Rapid prototyping and validation. You turn rough product ideas into working code prototypes, skipping traditional handoffs to put functional tools in front of users quickly. You collaborate directly with product management to gather real-world feedback, iterating on the design before it hardens.
Hardening and shipping. Once a pattern is validated, you harden the code and ship the PR yourself. You are expected to be deep in the codebase, working alongside Senior Engineers to ensure your UI is as performant and accessible as it is beautiful.
AI-forward build habits. You use AI tools such as Claude or Cursor as a default part of prototyping and shipping, not as a novelty. You have opinions about what to hand to an agent and what to do by hand, because you have shipped both ways.
UI and interaction craft. You own how the product feels to use, not just whether it works. Empty states, loading states, and the small interaction details are part of the job, not polish someone adds later.
Accessibility and craft. You hold the same craft and accessibility bar as the rest of engineering and product, even while moving at prototype speed.

How you work

AI forward operator. You use AI as a default part of how you build, and you have opinions about what agents should own and what humans should own, because you have shipped things that way.
Product minded, not just design minded. You think about the user’s experience, not just the pixel. You can tell the difference between a feature that looks finished and one that actually changes behavior.
Pragmatic about process. You right size the governance to the team. Enough structure to hold the bar, not so much that shipping routes around you.
Taste and rigor together. You care what it looks like and you care how it holds up under load. Both, always.
Human centered. We believe AI should make the human parts of fundraising better, not replace them. That belief has to show up in what you build and how it feels to use.
Ownership over territory. You see what needs to happen and you drive it with a bias toward starting.

You Must Have

4+ years of experience in a hybrid role (Design Engineer, Product Engineer, or UI Engineer) with a proven track record of shipping production-ready interfaces.
Experience prototyping in code (Claude Code, React or equivalent) and validating with real users before a feature is fully built out
Comfort working directly with a general manager, product manager, and engineer in a small team, with no separate design review gate slowing things down
A real eye for interface design and interaction quality. You care about spacing, motion, and state as much as function, and you can tell the difference between a feature that looks finished and one that’s actually good
Enough engineering fundamentals (React or equivalent, component-based systems, accessible and performant CSS) to build real interfaces yourself, even if you are not the one optimizing performance at scale
Hands on with AI tooling as part of your build workflow, including prototyping.
Comfortable moving between a design tool (Figma or equivalent) and your code editor, without treating either as the real work.
Accessibility fluency, and the instinct to solve it structurally rather than case by case
Comfort taking a rough roadmap idea and running with it, from sketch to shipped, without a lot of hand-holding
Excellent written communication. Your documentation is part of the product

Nice to have: Design token pipelines, Storybook, or equivalent. Experience making a system consumable by AI tooling. Fundraising technology, nonprofit CRM, or the nonprofit sector.

What success looks like

Prototypes reach real gift officers or CDOs within days of a roadmap idea, not weeks
Features ship because they were validated with customers first, not because the roadmap said so
A senior engineer is shipping alongside you, not waiting on a handoff
Design and engineering effort is not wasted on features that customer feedback would have killed earlier
Your work is visible to the rest of the team on a normal cadence
Momentum and Insights usage grows because the product actually saves gift officers time, not just because it shipped

About Us

Virtuous software is powering the world’s leading nonprofits and inspiring a new generation of generosity.

At Virtuous, we believe generosity has the power to transform the world - and so we are on a mission to create $10B in net new generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their donors.

Our talented team is hungry, humble, and committed to delivering best-in-class software solutions, customer success interactions, and sales experiences to the nonprofit community.

Our values are more than just a poster on the wall. Instead, our mission and values are precisely why candidates choose Virtuous. Our core values are:

Build Better: We build audacious ideas to accelerate philanthropy and dismantle the status quo.
Display Radical Generosity: We are generous with our time & talent as we serve our team and the nonprofit community.
Stay Humble & Enjoy the Journey: We take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves too seriously.

Virtuous should act as a career accelerator for everyone on our team. Team members should look back at their time at Virtuous as one of the most productive and stretching seasons in their professional lives. This means that working at Virtuous isn't for everybody. It is for the select few who are ready to do hard things and build something truly great.

If this sounds like you, we’d love for you to apply!

What We Offer

Market competitive pay leveraging Carta data
Employee recognition through Bonusly (birthdays, anniversaries, achievements, etc.)
401(k) retirement plan with company matching- 50% match up to 6% of compensation after 90 days
We value our employee’s work-life balance and encourage taking advantage of Unlimited PTO
Supportive time off including paid volunteer days and company holidays
Employer-contributed healthcare benefits, encompassing medical, dental, and vision coverage, with plans available for dependents and choices for Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA).
12 weeks primary parent leave, 4 weeks secondary parent leave - full pay (adoption as well)
We pride ourselves on Community and host exciting company outings and events.

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AI Design Engineer - Momentum