Senior Design Engineer, Content Production Technology

Intro to Position

NPR is seeking a Senior Design Engineer to serve as a vital bridge between design strategy, user needs, and engineering execution within our Content Production Technology team. You will be the connective tissue between product design and front-end development, translating high-level strategy into tangible UX prototypes and writing front-end code to accelerate our development cycles. In this role, you will embed deeply within the production tools ecosystems, partnering closely with Product Managers, Engineers, and NPR’s Editorial and Music teams to optimize workflows for our content creators. If you are a systems-thinker who is equally passionate about beautiful user experiences and clean, complex code patterns, this role offers the unique opportunity to shape the future of NPR’s production platforms.

This is a union-represented role covered under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement with NABET-CWA DMU.

Responsibilities

• Design-to-Engineering Translation: Bridge the gap between product design and engineering execution by translating high-level product strategy into clean, component-based wireframes and technical user experience pathways.
• Rapid Prototyping: Build functional, high-fidelity interactive code prototypes to validate design concepts with content creators and stakeholders before final development.
• Front-End Integration: Write production-ready front-end code, establishing standard styling patterns and providing immediate technical design resolutions to developers to optimize development cycles.
• Workflow Optimization: Embed deeply within the Nexus and Grove CMS ecosystems, engineering faster, highly efficient publishing workflows customized to our editorial workflows.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner directly with Product Managers, UX Designers, and engineering teams to co-develop functional requirements that maximize platform usability.
• Design Cohort Engagement: Actively participate in NPR's broader design cohort, collaborating with specialists from NPR’s Product and Audience Technology (PAT) teams to scale design best practices.
• Editorial & Creative Alignment: Work closely with NPR Editorial, Programming, and Music teams to maintain a deep operational understanding of publishing, distribution, and audience engagement requirements.
• User Advocacy: Champion intuitive usability for both internal content creators and external public media audiences, ensuring that development paths prioritize user needs over technical convenience.