Staff Design Engineer

At Shakepay, we’re on a mission to usher in the Bitcoin golden age. We’re reimagining financial services to give every Canadian their fair shake.

Our culture is built around doing work that matters, winning as a team, and celebrating success. If you're the kind of person who values growth, shipping fast, and sharing your ideas openly with a group of like-minded people, come and build with us!

About Shakepay

Since 2015, we’ve been building the Shakepay app to make buying and earning bitcoin fast, easy, and secure. In 2022, we launched the Shakepay Card, allowing shakers to earn bitcoin rewards when they shop. Today, more than one million Canadians use Shakepay to grow their bitcoin savings and take control of their financial future. 

We’re regulated across all Canadian provinces and territories, and backed by renowned venture capitalists with $44M in funding. We have a passionate, loyal, and growing community, and we’re looking for people who want to help us build something truly special.

Staff Design Engineer

As a Staff Design Engineer , you are the ultimate bridge between design, product, and engineering. 

This is a design-first role for a product designer who uses code to accelerate prototyping, experimentation, and product development.

You don't just design features; you build them. We are leaning heavily into a design-led product development approach, and in this role, your primary focus will be taking complex problems, designing intuitive solutions, and writing the code to prototype or ship them to our customers rapidly. 

If you are a builder who loves living at the intersection of pixel-perfect design and production-ready code, this is for you.

What you’ll be doing

Own problems end-to-end: Take full ownership of product features from understanding the problem, to designing the experience, to writing the front-end code and shipping it to users.

Prototype in code: Replace static mockups with functional prototypes to validate ideas quickly and de-risk decisions with real customer feedback.

Drive design-led development: Work in a fixed-time, variable-scope environment. Focus on outcomes over outputs, partnering closely with backend and core engineering to deliver meaningful impact.

Ship fast without sacrificing quality: Balance speed and craft. Deliver polished, production-ready experiences on tight timelines, with strong attention to detail in both design and code.

Elevate the UI architecture: Evolve our design system and component libraries so design and code stay perfectly in sync across mobile and web platforms.

Act as a force multiplier: Raise the bar for the entire design team by helping designers ship in code and integrate AI tools into their workflows—improving speed, autonomy, and technical depth across the organization.

Who we’re looking for

Proven hybrid experience: You’ve shipped real products where you owned both the design and code implementation (e.g. React, Typescript, Node, Vue.js etc.).

A builder's portfolio: You can point to live products—not just mockups—where you designed and built the experience. You likely use AI tools to prototype, iterate, and accelerate your workflow.

Strong product taste: You have a sharp eye for quality and know what makes an experience feel intuitive, fast, and delightful.

Deep technical understanding: You understand the constraints and possibilities of modern front-end development, and design accordingly—building solutions that are performant, scalable, and maintainable.

A builder mindset: You don’t wait for specs. You define problems, make decisions, and drive work to completion with minimal oversight.

Excellent communication skills : You can articulate design decisions and technical trade-offs clearly across design and engineering.

Passion for Bitcoin, financial empowerment, and the future of money.

Why join us?

Help shape the future of money:  Be part of a team that's revolutionizing financial services in Canada, one sat at a time.

Impact millions:  As cryptocurrency continues to gain traction, our potential for growth is massive. You can help us bring Shakepay and Bitcoin to all Canadians.

Grow your career:  We’re growing, and so can you! We have programs in place to encourage continuous learning, growth, and development.

Ideas, not titles:  We want the best ideas to make their way through, no matter where they come from.

Perks and benefits

🤝  Be an owner  - Every employee has stock options as part of their total compensation 

🥅  Reach your goals  - Yearly salary assessments 

🦷 Health & wellness :   Access to comprehensive health and dental coverage, including health and wellness spending accounts. 

🌎 Remote-friendly : Work from anywhere in Canada, with optional access to our office spaces in Montreal and Toronto.

🆙  Level Up : A $2,000 annual budget for courses, certifications, and training to support your career growth.

🌴 Time off : 20 days of vacation per year. And if you use all your vacation, we give you a $1,000 bonus.

🐣 Parental leave : Enjoy a parental leave top up to 100% of your salary for 18 weeks.

🙌 Have fun together:  quarterly team-specific or company-wide offsite to connect with each other  

T he base salary range for this position is $190,000+ CAD. Base pay may vary based on factors such as years of experience, skills and qualifications. Additionally, employees are eligible for equity, pay increases based on performance, benefits including health and dental care, and paid time off. 

We understand that potential can be just as valuable as experience. If you're eager to learn, grow, and contribute to the mission but worry that you may not have the “right” experience, we still want you to apply. We encourage applications from everyone, regardless of background and life experience. We’re firm believers that a little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept .

Fluency in English is required due to the percentage of English-speaking customers and the nature of our platform, which is available to all Canadians.

We use technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), to support certain parts of our hiring process. This can include tools that assist with scheduling, application review, candidate communications, and generating interview notes, guides, or summaries so our team can stay focused on the conversation. All hiring decisions are made by our hiring team.