Design Technologist

Our team is committed to enhancing physician and patient quality of life through Elation, a SaaS cloud-based clinical platform. We’ve built a product that users love, and we plan to keep it that way by continuing to empathize with users and help them overcome their most significant challenges. Designing at Elation is humbling, challenging, and rewarding. Our users do work that affects human lives, and our tools can make or break that work.

The Role

As a Design Technologist, you'll own the design and engineering of Elation’s design system while defining how AI-native systems compose UI — directing the interaction patterns, visual language, and developer experience that make it all feel simple.

Primary care clinicians have repeatedly awarded Elation "Best in KLAS" in our category, a recognition that reflects our clinician-first approach to design. Reporting up through our Chief Product Officer, you'll work within our frontend platform team to collaborate with everyone from the designers and engineers within Elation to the physicians who rely on our product every day, delivering care to more than 25 million patients.

The right candidate thrives in complexity and brings the craft and curiosity this role requires. If you want to do complex, meaningful work at the place where design, engineering, and healthcare intersect, we'd love to hear from you!

What you’ll do

• Own the architecture, strategy, design, engineering, and evolution of Elation’s design system.
• Lead an AI-agent-first rearchitecting of the design system. Encoding composition rules and component guidelines for an agent to discover and apply.
• Help define Elation’s AI-native experience through component design, pattern development, and an opinionated point of view that moves how design and engineering build.
• Help shape our application’s design direction and visual language.
• Deeply understand and research our users — their problems, workflows, and jobs-to-be-done — to build the best-in-class tools for their work.
• Support your partners in design and engineering to leverage these systems.

What we’re looking for

Success in this role can take many different shapes — we don’t expect you to arrive having mastered every part of it. If you feel you’re a strong candidate for this role and excited to collaborate, we encourage you to apply.

• 5+ years of experience creating and shipping complex, web-based products in a cross-functional team as a designer, engineer, or related role.
• 2+ years leading cross-functional projects or initiatives, with a proven record of driving strategy and execution.
• A genuine multi-discipline practitioner. Strong at both design craft and building with modern frontend frameworks.
• Strong knowledge of design systems.
• Experience in health tech or other compliance-heavy industries.
• AI-native work practices and experience building with agentic tools like Claude Code or Cursor.

Nice to have

• Experience designing or building for AI-native user experiences.
• Strong API literacy and data modeling experience.
• Accessibility and WCAG experience.
• Experience building AI platform or infrastructure (MCP servers, eval harnesses, token build pipelines).

Elation welcomes individuals from all backgrounds and walks of life. Elation is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and is dedicated to creating and maintaining a diverse and inclusive work environment.

We are committed to equal opportunity for all employees and applicants, and value individuals with diverse perspectives including, but not limited to: race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, gender identity or gender expression, national origin, disability or veteran status.

Elation also complies with all applicable national, state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act and IRCA. We firmly believe a strong culture that supports a diverse and inclusive workforce allows us to achieve Elation’s mission of helping independent primary care thrive.

• Showcase a healthcare‑focused design system case study: In your portfolio, include a detailed project where you built or extended a design system for a regulated industry (e.g., HIPAA‑compliant SaaS). Highlight Figma/Sketch files, component libraries in Storybook, and how you documented usage guidelines for developers. Explicitly note any AI‑driven components you created (e.g., auto‑complete forms, predictive UI) and the impact on clinician workflow (time saved, error reduction).
• Demonstrate fluency with the tech stack they use: Prepare a short live demo or a GitHub repo that ties a UI component from your design system to React code, using TypeScript, Jest, and CSS‑in‑JS (e.g., Stitches or Emotion). Show how you ensure accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) and performance (Lighthouse scores > 90) – Elation’s clinicians need fast, reliable interfaces.
• Emphasize empathy‑driven research with clinicians: In your interview, reference specific methods you’ve used to gather feedback from doctors or nurses (contextual shadowing, remote usability testing via Lookback, surveys on EMR pain points). Prepare a one‑page “clinician insight” slide that maps those findings to concrete design decisions in your system.
• Prepare for remote collaboration scenarios: Be ready to talk about how you run asynchronous design reviews (e.g., Figma comments + Slack threads) and synchronous workshops (Miro + Zoom). Mention any experience establishing a “design‑dev handoff” pipeline that integrates with their CI/CD (e.g., pulling Storybook into a Chromatic visual‑test workflow) to keep the remote team aligned.
• Negotiate with data on remote market rates: Research current Design Technologist salaries for US/Canada remote roles (typically $130‑$180 k base plus equity). When discussing compensation, cite your proven ROI (e.g., reduced dev time by 20 % through a reusable component library) and request a package that includes a flexible stipend for home office upgrades and a clear equity vesting schedule.