Staff Design Engineer in London

Aave Labs began with a simple question: how do we make financial services like borrowing, saving, and earning more accessible globally? We built the Aave Protocol, now the world’s largest and most trusted onchain lending market, connecting decentralized finance with individuals, traditional finance, and fintech. Today, we build trusted, high-quality products that expand access to lending, credit, and savings globally.

Our culture is centred around building trusted products that help people access and discover economic opportunities. We hold a high bar for quality and craftsmanship. No detail is too small. Trust depends on it. We’re a global team building products people can actually use, turning complex technology into something simple and reliable. We stay aligned, move quickly, and think long term, while keeping teams lean and focused on impact.

We're looking for a Staff Design Engineer who operates across the full picture – someone who deeply understands product design, works autonomously, and translates their knowledge into exceptional web interfaces and design systems. Financial products are complex. Our users range from first-timers to power users, and the challenge of making that experience clear, fast, and trustworthy is one we take seriously. At this level, you're not just executing — you're bringing product intuition to the work, identifying where things break down, and making calls that shape the direction of what we build.

How you can make an impact:

• Work autonomously across our web products, designing and building high-quality UI with a strong point of view on how it should feel and function.
• Own and evolve complex, reusable components within the Aave design system — setting the standard for quality and consistency.
• Bring product-level thinking to everything you work on — understanding user needs, business context, and technical constraints, whilst balancing them well.
• Collaborate with our talented designers, engineers, and product leads to bring clarity to ambiguous problems.
• Help raise the bar for the team through the quality of your work and the way you approach problems.

Let's connect if you have:

• A true hybrid — equally at home in Figma and a TypeScript codebase, and who sees that as a single discipline, not two.
• Strong proficiency in React, TypeScript, CSS and system design and architecture. Deep experience with component-driven design systems and building for consistency at scale.
• The product sense to work without a detailed brief — you can identify what needs to be solved, not just how to solve it.
• A demonstrated ability to take complex UX problems — information-dense interfaces, multi-step flows, edge cases — and make them feel resolved and clear.

Nice to haves:

• Curiosity about web3 and DeFi is a plus; you don't need to be an expert, but genuine interest in the space goes a long way.
• Curiosity about AI and its use in product design and daily workflows.

Haven’t quite met all the criteria? Let’s not miss out on the chance to speak. Whilst you might not meet every single requirement, you might bring other, more exciting skills to the company!

Equal opportunities statement:

Aave Labs celebrates diversity and views each and every team member as a separate individual with their own unique identity. No matter your race, religion, gender, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation or even the wallet you use, we welcome you at Aave Labs. As an equal opportunities employer, we take accountability and believe in everyone's potential to build, create and inspire changes. With a mission to build a diverse workforce, we are proud to foster a working environment in which everyone can feel safe and valued for who they are.