Staff UX/UI Engineer

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Staff UX/UI Engineer

Company: Félix

Location: Colombia (Remote)

Job Type: Full-Time

Category: Engineering / Design / Operations Technology

Date Posted: 2025-09-22

Experience Level: Senior (10+ years)

Remote Status: Fully Remote

🚀 Role Summary

• Lead the design and implementation of a robust, modular UX/UI framework to facilitate seamless cross-team collaboration and feature integration.

• Establish and enforce comprehensive design system guidelines, ensuring consistency, scalability, and adherence to accessibility standards across the application landscape.

• Bridge the gap between user experience principles and engineering execution, translating complex requirements into intuitive interfaces and resilient, maintainable application structures.

• Champion best practices in frontend development, user-centric design, and collaborative workflows to enhance product quality and development efficiency.

📝 Enhancement Note: While the title is "Staff UX/UI Engineer," the responsibilities and requirements strongly indicate a role that bridges engineering and design, with a significant focus on systems architecture and process optimization for development teams. This is crucial for operations professionals who might not directly be engineers but need to understand how technical frameworks impact GTM processes and customer-facing tools. The emphasis on modularity, design systems, and collaboration workflows is highly relevant to operations roles focused on platform stability and scalability.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and implement a scalable, modular UX/UI framework that empowers multiple engineering teams to contribute features concurrently without compromising interoperability or introducing conflicts.

• Define, document, and maintain a comprehensive design system, including reusable components, interaction patterns, and accessibility standards, to ensure a cohesive and consistent user experience across all Félix products.

• Collaborate closely with Product Managers, Engineering Leads, and QA teams to deeply understand user needs and business requirements, translating them into actionable design and engineering specifications.

• Create high-fidelity prototypes, detailed mockups, and production-ready UI components that effectively balance aesthetic appeal, intuitive usability, performance optimization, and long-term maintainability.

• Engineer a collaboration-friendly application architecture that proactively minimizes merge conflicts, dependency issues, and the occurrence of UI regressions through robust versioning and integration strategies.

• Conduct rigorous usability testing and user research initiatives to validate design decisions, gather critical feedback, and drive continuous improvement in the overall user experience.

• Actively champion and enforce adherence to industry best practices in web accessibility (WCAG), responsive design principles, and internationalization (i18n) to ensure broad product reach and inclusivity.

• Mentor and guide junior designers and frontend engineers, fostering a strong culture of design excellence, technical craftsmanship, and user-centric development methodologies within engineering teams.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities highlight a strategic, architectural-level contribution rather than just feature implementation. For operations professionals, understanding this focus on framework design and system stability is key, as it directly impacts the reliability and scalability of customer-facing tools and internal platforms. The emphasis on collaboration and mentorship suggests a leadership component within the technical domain, indirectly influencing how operational processes are supported by robust, well-designed systems.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: While no specific degree is mandated, a strong portfolio and demonstrated experience equivalent to a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Design, or a related field will be highly valued.

Experience: 10+ years of progressive experience in UX/UI Engineering, Frontend Engineering, or a closely related technical design and development role.

Required Skills:

• Frontend Framework Expertise: Strong proficiency in modern, component-driven frontend frameworks such as React, Angular, or Vue.js, with a deep understanding of their architectural patterns.

• Design Systems Mastery: Expert-level experience in building, implementing, and maintaining design systems (e.g., Material UI, custom component libraries), including concepts like design tokens and theming.

• Modular Architecture Design: Proven ability to design and implement modular application architectures that promote reusability, maintainability, and scalability across large engineering organizations.

• Collaboration Workflow Proficiency: Solid understanding of collaborative development workflows, including version control systems (Git), Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, and effective branching/merging strategies.

• User Experience Principles: Strong background in core user experience (UX) principles, visual design fundamentals, and interaction design patterns, with a user-first mindset.

• Integration Issue Resolution: Demonstrated experience in preventing and effectively resolving integration challenges that arise from multiple teams contributing to a shared codebase or system.

• Testing Frameworks: Familiarity and practical experience with modern testing frameworks (e.g., Jest, Cypress, Playwright) to ensure the stability, reliability, and regression-free performance of UI components and applications.

• Problem-Solving Acumen: Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, capable of balancing creative design solutions with rigorous engineering principles to address complex technical challenges.

• Communication & Collaboration: Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, essential for aligning diverse stakeholders across design, product, and engineering on technical and design decisions.

Preferred Skills:

• Micro-Frontend Architectures: Experience with micro-frontend architectures and their implementation challenges and benefits.

• Theming & Multi-Brand Support: Knowledge of advanced theming capabilities, multi-brand support strategies, and design token utilization for flexible customization.

• Fintech or High-Availability Systems: Background in fintech environments or other industries requiring high availability, robust security, and performance-critical systems.

• Open-Source Contributions: Active contributions to open-source design systems, UI frameworks, or related projects.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on 10+ years of experience, modern frontend frameworks, and design systems indicates a senior, impactful role. For operations professionals, understanding the tools and methodologies used here is important as they often interact with or manage the platforms these engineers build. The "equivalent competencies" clause is a standard way to broaden the candidate pool, suggesting that practical experience and a strong portfolio can outweigh formal education in specific areas.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Modular Framework Examples: Showcase projects demonstrating the design and implementation of modular application frameworks or component libraries, highlighting how they facilitated team collaboration and reduced integration issues.

• Design System Case Studies: Present detailed case studies of design systems developed or significantly contributed to, illustrating the process from initial concept to widespread adoption, including component libraries, style guides, and accessibility adherence.

• System Architecture Diagrams: Include visual representations of application architectures, specifically focusing on how modularity, component-based design, and collaboration workflows were architected to ensure scalability and maintainability.

• Problem-Solving Demonstrations: Provide examples of complex technical or design challenges faced and overcome, particularly those related to cross-team development, UI regressions, or integration conflicts, detailing the solution and its impact.

Process Documentation:

• Workflow Design & Optimization: Document processes for designing and optimizing collaborative frontend development workflows, including Git branching strategies, code review protocols, and CI/CD integration for modular components.

• Design System Implementation: Outline the methodology for implementing and governing a design system, covering component development standards, design token management, and guidelines for adoption by multiple teams.

• User-Centric Development Lifecycle: Illustrate the integration of user research and usability testing into the development lifecycle, demonstrating how feedback loops are established to continuously refine the user experience of the framework and its components.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration Protocols: Detail established protocols for seamless collaboration between design, product, and engineering teams, ensuring alignment on requirements, design decisions, and technical implementation.

📝 Enhancement Note: This section is crucial for operations candidates. While they might not be building the framework, they are often consumers of it or responsible for the processes that interact with it. A strong portfolio that demonstrates an understanding of scalable systems, collaborative workflows, and user-centric design will resonate with the hiring team and showcase an ability to contribute to a well-functioning technical ecosystem.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: Given the seniority (10+ years), specialized technical skills (UX/UI Engineering, modern frameworks, design systems), and the company's Series B funding status, a competitive salary range for a remote Staff UX/UI Engineer in Colombia (or for remote employees based in Colombia) would typically fall between $70,000 - $110,000 USD annually. This range is an estimate based on industry benchmarks for senior engineering roles in emerging tech markets, considering the company's growth stage and investor backing.

Benefits:

• Competitive Salary: A base salary commensurate with experience and the critical nature of the role.

• Initial Stock Options Grant: Opportunity to gain equity in a hyper-growth Series B company, aligning personal success with company growth.

• Annual Performance Bonus: Performance-based incentives that reward contributions to company and team objectives.

• Comprehensive Health Coverage: Robust health, dental, and vision insurance plans to support employee well-being.

• Remote Work Environment: Flexibility to work from anywhere, with the option for hybrid arrangements if located near their Miami or Mexico City offices.

• Continuous Learning Opportunities: Access to resources and programs designed for ongoing professional development and skill enhancement.

• Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO): A flexible approach to time off, encouraging work-life balance and employee autonomy.

• Paid Parental Leave: Support for new parents with dedicated paid leave.

• Growth Opportunities: Empowering environment within a dynamic startup, offering significant potential for career advancement and impact.

Working Hours: The standard working hours are typically 40 hours per week, aligning with full-time employment. However, the remote nature and unlimited PTO policy suggest a focus on results and flexibility, allowing for asynchronous collaboration and adaptable schedules, provided project deadlines and team collaboration needs are met.

📝 Enhancement Note: The salary estimate is a critical component for operations professionals to benchmark their expectations. The provided range is based on global remote engineering salaries for senior roles and adjusted for the context of a high-growth startup in Latin America. The benefits package is comprehensive and typical for well-funded tech companies, emphasizing work-life balance and employee growth, which are attractive to operations professionals seeking stability and development.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Fintech, Remittances, AI-powered Chatbots, Blockchain, Stablecoins. Félix is revolutionizing cross-border payments by building a financial ecosystem for Latin immigrants in the U.S., leveraging cutting-edge technology to make remittances faster, more affordable, and accessible.

Company Size: Hyper-growth Series B company, indicating a rapidly expanding team, likely ranging from 100-300 employees, with plans for significant scaling.

Founded: Félix is a relatively young company (founded in recent years, given Series B funding), operating with the agility and innovation characteristic of a startup, but with the financial backing and strategic vision of a more established entity.

Team Structure:

• Operations Team: While not explicitly detailed, an operations function would be critical, likely encompassing Revenue Operations, Sales Operations, and potentially Customer Success Operations, supporting the GTM strategy and ensuring efficient customer onboarding and support.

• Engineering Team: This role sits within a fast-growing engineering department, focused on building the core technology platform, including the AI chatbot, blockchain integration, and the user-facing application framework.

• Cross-functional Collaboration: The role emphasizes strong collaboration between Product, Engineering, and Design, indicating a matrixed or agile team structure where individuals work across disciplines to achieve common goals.

Methodology:

• Data-Driven Decision Making: Leveraging AI and modern technology suggests a strong reliance on data analytics for product development, user behavior insights, and operational efficiency.

• Agile & Iterative Development: The "bias for action" and "experimentation spirit" point towards agile methodologies, rapid prototyping, and iterative improvement cycles.

• Customer-Obsentric Approach: The mission to serve underserved communities and empower customers is central, driving product development and operational priorities.

Company Website: https://felixpago.com/

📝 Enhancement Note: Understanding Félix's mission and its reliance on technology is crucial for operations professionals. The company's focus on innovation in fintech, combined with a hyper-growth stage, means operations roles will likely be fast-paced, data-intensive, and focused on scaling processes to support rapid expansion. The emphasis on serving an underserved community adds a layer of purpose that can be a significant cultural driver.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This Staff UX/UI Engineer role, while technical, represents a senior-level position within the engineering organization. For an operations professional, this signals that Félix values high-impact, experienced individuals who can architect and lead complex initiatives. A comparable operations role would likely be a Senior Operations Manager, Director of Operations, or a specialized Lead role in RevOps or Sales Ops, focusing on strategic platform development and process architecture.

Reporting Structure: This role likely reports to an Engineering Manager, Director of Engineering, or potentially a Head of Product/Engineering. In an operations context, this implies that operations leaders would need to collaborate with this engineering function, ensuring that business requirements and GTM strategies are effectively translated into technical solutions and supported by robust systems.

Operations Impact: The work of this UX/UI Engineer directly impacts the customer experience and the efficiency of internal development processes. For operations, this translates to:

• Scalability of GTM Tools: A well-designed, modular framework is essential for integrating and scaling CRM, marketing automation, sales enablement, and customer support platforms.

• User Adoption: Intuitive interfaces designed by this role are critical for driving adoption of both customer-facing products and internal operational tools.

• Development Velocity: A strong design system and modular architecture enable faster feature deployment and iteration, which operations teams rely on for implementing new campaigns, sales processes, or customer success initiatives.

Growth Opportunities:

• Technical Leadership: Opportunity to become a recognized expert and technical leader within the engineering organization, influencing architectural decisions and setting technical direction.

• Mentorship & Team Building: Chance to mentor junior engineers and designers, contributing to the growth of the engineering team and establishing best practices.

• Strategic Influence: Direct involvement in shaping the core technology platform that underpins Félix's mission, offering significant strategic impact.

• Fintech Domain Expertise: Deep dive into the nuances of fintech, blockchain, and AI applications, building specialized knowledge in a high-demand sector.

• Transition to Operations Architecture: For individuals with a strong technical bent, this role could offer insights into how to architect and manage operational systems, potentially leading to roles in operations technology or platform management.

📝 Enhancement Note: This analysis helps operations professionals understand the role's strategic importance and how it intersects with their own career paths. The emphasis on growth opportunities within a fast-paced tech environment is a key attraction for ambitious professionals. The connection between engineering architecture and operational system design is a critical insight.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: Félix offers a remote work environment as the primary arrangement. They also maintain offices in Miami (USA) and Mexico City (Mexico), suggesting a potential for a hybrid model for employees located in or willing to relocate to these cities. This dual approach caters to diverse employee preferences and operational needs.

Office Location(s):

• Miami, USA: A hub for their operations, likely housing key business functions.

• Mexico City, Mexico: Another significant office location, potentially supporting engineering, operations, or regional GTM efforts.

• Remote: Employees can work from anywhere, with specific mention of remote employees being considered in Colombia.

Workspace Context:

• Collaborative Online Environment: Expect a highly collaborative digital workspace, utilizing modern communication and project management tools (e.g., Slack, Asana, Jira) to facilitate remote teamwork.

• Access to Advanced Tools: The role requires and implies access to sophisticated design and development tools, including IDEs, design software (Figma, Sketch), prototyping tools, and potentially cloud-based development environments.

• Cross-Functional Interaction: Opportunities for regular interaction with product managers, fellow engineers, designers, and potentially GTM leaders, fostering a dynamic and engaged work environment.

Work Schedule: While a standard 40-hour work week is implied for full-time employment, the remote nature and emphasis on results suggest a degree of flexibility. Employees are expected to manage their time effectively to meet project deadlines and participate in scheduled meetings and collaborative sessions, often requiring coordination across different time zones.

📝 Enhancement Note: For operations roles, understanding the work environment is key to assessing team dynamics and collaboration potential. The hybrid option and focus on remote work are increasingly common and attractive. The mention of specific offices alongside a remote-first approach suggests a mature but flexible operational setup.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A review of your resume and portfolio by a recruiter or hiring manager to assess basic qualifications and alignment with the role's core requirements.

• Technical Interview(s): In-depth discussions focusing on frontend development expertise, design systems knowledge, architectural thinking, and problem-solving skills. This may include live coding exercises or system design challenges.

• Portfolio Review Session: A dedicated session where you'll walk through selected projects from your portfolio, explaining your design process, technical implementation, and the impact of your work. Expect questions on how you handled collaboration, challenges, and trade-offs.

• Cross-functional Interviews: Meetings with Product Managers and/or Engineering Leads to assess collaboration style, communication skills, and understanding of business objectives.

• Final Interview: Typically with a senior leader (e.g., Head of Engineering or CTO) to discuss overall fit, vision, and long-term contributions.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Curate Strategically: Select 2-3 of your most impactful projects that best showcase your experience with modular frameworks, design systems, and complex UI engineering.

• Detail Your Process: For each project, clearly articulate the problem statement, your role, the design and engineering process, key challenges encountered, solutions implemented, and the measurable outcomes or impact.

• Highlight Collaboration: Emphasize how you collaborated with other teams (product, engineering, QA) and how your work facilitated their efforts.

• Showcase Technical Depth: Be prepared to discuss the technical stack, architectural decisions, and specific coding challenges you overcame. Explain why you made certain choices.

• Address Modularity & Scalability: Explicitly detail how your projects addressed modularity, scalability, and maintainability, especially if they involved multiple teams or components.

Challenge Preparation:

• System Design Exercise: Be ready for a system design challenge focused on building a scalable and modular UI framework or design system. Think about component libraries, state management, theming, accessibility, and how to manage contributions from multiple teams.

• Problem-Solving Scenarios: Prepare to discuss hypothetical scenarios related to resolving integration conflicts, improving UI performance, or implementing new design patterns across a large codebase.

• Technical Deep Dive: Brush up on modern frontend concepts, JavaScript/TypeScript, and best practices in areas like accessibility, performance optimization, and testing.

📝 Enhancement Note: Operations professionals often need to present their own work and understand technical teams' processes. These tips provide insight into how technical candidates are evaluated, which can be applied to operations roles seeking similar levels of analytical rigor, process documentation, and impact demonstration. Understanding the portfolio expectations is crucial for any role that requires showcasing past work.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Frontend Frameworks: React, Angular, or Vue.js (strong proficiency required in at least one).

• Component Libraries: Experience with Material UI or similar established component libraries, as well as building custom component libraries.

• Design & Prototyping: Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, InVision, or similar tools for design, prototyping, and collaboration.

• Version Control: Git (essential for collaborative workflows).

• CI/CD Tools: Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) for automated testing and deployment.

Analytics & Reporting:

• Testing Frameworks: Jest, Cypress, Playwright (for ensuring UI stability and functionality).

• Monitoring Tools: Experience with application performance monitoring (APM) tools may be beneficial for understanding the impact of UI on overall system performance.

CRM & Automation:

• While not directly the focus of this role, understanding how the developed framework integrates with broader CRM and automation platforms (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, marketing automation tools) is important for holistic GTM operations. The modular design should facilitate such integrations.

📝 Enhancement Note: This section highlights the technical environment. For operations professionals, recognizing these tools is important for understanding the technical foundation of the company's products and internal systems. A strong grasp of the technology stack allows operations to better align their strategies and requests with engineering capabilities.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values: While this role is not strictly operations, the company culture and values will influence how engineering and operations collaborate. Félix emphasizes:

• Obsession with Empowering Customers: A deep commitment to serving and improving the lives of their target user community.

• Bias for Action & Urgency: A fast-paced, get-it-done mentality, driven by a need for rapid execution and impact.

• Experimentation Spirit: A willingness to try new approaches, learn from failures, and iterate quickly.

• Ownership: Employees are encouraged to act as owners, taking responsibility for outcomes and driving initiatives.

• Radical Transparency & Constructive Feedback: Open communication and a culture where feedback is given and received to foster growth and excellence.

• Craftsmanship & Excellence: A dedication to building high-quality products and solutions.

Collaboration Style:

• Cross-functional Integration: Strong emphasis on collaboration between design, engineering, and product, breaking down traditional silos.

• Proactive Communication: Expect frequent communication via tools like Slack and regular check-ins to ensure alignment and address roadblocks quickly.

• Knowledge Sharing: A culture that encourages sharing insights, best practices, and learnings across teams, fostering collective growth.

• Experimentation in Process: Openness to trying new collaborative methods or tools to improve team efficiency and effectiveness.

📝 Enhancement Note: For operations professionals, understanding the company's values is critical for cultural fit. Félix's culture is characterized by speed, ownership, and a strong customer mission, which will shape how operations teams interact with engineering and drive GTM initiatives.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Architectural Complexity: Designing and maintaining a modular framework that supports numerous teams and evolving feature sets requires significant architectural foresight and ongoing refactoring.

• Inter-team Dependency Management: Balancing the autonomy of individual teams with the need for consistent integration and minimal conflicts across the entire application.

• Maintaining Design System Cohesion: Ensuring that the design system remains a single source of truth as it grows and is adopted by diverse teams with varying needs.

• Rapid Iteration vs. Stability: Navigating the tension between the startup's need for rapid feature deployment and the engineering imperative for robust, stable, and maintainable code.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Advanced Architecture: Deepen expertise in micro-frontend architectures, component-driven development, and scalable design systems.

• Fintech & AI Domain: Gain specialized knowledge in the fintech sector, AI applications in remittances, and blockchain technology.

• Leadership & Mentorship: Develop leadership skills by mentoring junior engineers and influencing technical direction.

• Cross-functional Impact: Understand how technical architecture directly supports GTM strategy and customer experience, broadening strategic perspective.

• Industry Conferences & Certifications: Opportunities to attend relevant industry events and pursue certifications in specialized areas of frontend development or system architecture.

📝 Enhancement Note: Understanding potential challenges helps candidates prepare mentally and strategically. The growth opportunities highlight the potential for career advancement and skill development, which are key considerations for long-term career planning in operations.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• Modular Design Philosophy: Be prepared to discuss your approach to designing modular UI architectures. What principles guide you? How do you ensure components are reusable, maintainable, and interoperable across different teams?

• Design System Implementation: How would you establish and govern a design system for a rapidly growing, multi-team engineering organization? What are the key elements, and how do you ensure adoption and adherence?

• Collaboration & Conflict Resolution: Describe a time you faced significant integration challenges or UI regressions due to cross-team development. How did you diagnose the issue, what steps did you take to resolve it, and what measures did you implement to prevent recurrence?

• User-Centricity in Engineering: How do you balance technical constraints with user experience goals? Provide examples of how you've championed user needs within an engineering context.

Company & Culture Questions:

• Mission Alignment: Discuss your understanding of Félix's mission and how your skills and experience can contribute to serving the target community.

• Startup Environment: How do you thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth, and iterative startup environment? What are your strategies for managing urgency and experimentation?

• Feedback & Transparency: How do you give and receive constructive feedback? How do you approach radical transparency in a team setting?

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Focus on Impact: Clearly articulate the business or user impact of your projects. Quantify results whenever possible (e.g., reduced development time, improved user satisfaction, fewer integration bugs).

• Narrative Flow: Structure your portfolio walkthrough as a story: problem, your solution, your process, challenges, and outcomes.

• Technical Rationale: Be ready to explain the technical decisions behind your work. Why did you choose a specific framework, pattern, or tool?

• Collaboration Evidence: Highlight instances where your work facilitated collaboration or how you worked effectively with other teams.

• Scalability & Maintainability: Emphasize how your designs and implementations considered long-term scalability and ease of maintenance.

📝 Enhancement Note: This preparation guide is invaluable for operations professionals applying for roles that require similar strategic thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills. Understanding how technical candidates are assessed can inform how operations candidates should frame their own experiences and present their achievements.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Staff UX/UI Engineer position:

• Submit your application through the provided link on gem.com.

• Tailor your Resume: Highlight experience in modern frontend frameworks, design systems, modular architecture, and cross-functional collaboration. Use keywords from the job description to ensure it passes ATS screening.

• Curate Your Portfolio: Select 2-3 projects that best demonstrate your ability to design and implement scalable UI frameworks and design systems. Prepare to walk through your process, technical decisions, and the impact of your work.

• Prepare for Technical & Behavioral Interviews: Practice answering questions related to system design, problem-solving, collaboration, and your experience in fast-paced environments. Be ready to articulate your alignment with Félix's mission and values.

• Research Félix: Understand their product, mission, recent funding rounds, and target market. This will help you tailor your responses and demonstrate genuine interest during interviews.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.