Design Engineer

About Sift

At Sift, we aim to accelerate the advent of next-generation machines, improving our lives on and off the planet. We're at an inflection point where connected machines will enter nearly everything we do. Sift is building data infrastructure underpinning the engineering, manufacturing, and operation of these machines.

Our system is inspired by processes and software built at SpaceX for Dragon, Falcon, Starlink, and Starship. We're a fast-growing startup with engineers and operators from SpaceX, Google, Palantir, and Astra, and backed by the best investors in the sector. We're looking for high-performing team members to lay the marketing foundation to support our GTM efforts at Sift.

About the Role

We're hiring a Design Engineer to partner with our go-to-market teams and translate Sift's product, architecture, and value propositions into high-clarity, high-fidelity visual outputs.

This is not a support or styling role. You'll work closely with product marketing, engineers, and leadership to engineer the way we explain the product-through diagrams, technical visuals, and scalable visual systems that resonate with decision-makers in aerospace, defense, and industrial tech.

You'll define our external visual layer-web, sales content, diagrams, explainers, and more-ensuring everything we ship reflects the clarity and quality of what we're building. You'll also have access to external design resources (agency/contract) for heavier lifts, but will be the principal designer and communicator of complex concepts.

Key Responsibilities

• Engineer the visual layer of our external-facing materials: diagrams, architecture visuals, landing pages, pitch decks, technical explainers

• Translate abstract product concepts and telemetry infrastructure into digestible visual models

• Partner with marketing and product to develop assets that help technical buyers understand complex workflows

• Maintain and evolve a modular visual system that scales with the company and product roadmap

• Create clarity across GTM deliverables, from web to one-pagers to keynote decks

• Build internal documentation and templates for reuse and consistency

• Ensure our visuals reflect the quality and precision expected by our technical audience

• Act as a visual systems engineer-bringing logic, modularity, and structure to how we communicate

What You Bring

• 3+ years experience in a visual design, content design, or visual communication engineering role

Prior experience in B2B SaaS or infrastructure startups strongly preferred

• Proven ability to explain technical concepts visually-diagrams, models, workflows

• Portfolio demonstrating clarity of thought and depth of execution

• Highly autonomous and structured thinker-able to break down ambiguity into modular, scalable components

• Strong communication skills-you can explain your rationale to engineers, PMs, and execs

• Familiarity with Figma is required; bonus if you've worked with Webflow, motion, or frontend frameworks

• Appreciation for fast-moving technical cultures and engineering-driven storytelling

Bonus Points

• Experience with customers in aerospace, defense, autonomy, or energy

• Systems thinking background-mechanical or software modeling

• Comfort working alongside engineers and product managers in technical environments

Portfolio Required: Please include a link to your portfolio or design examples. Applications without visual work samples will not be reviewed.

Salary range: $100,000 - $130,000 per year. Plus equity and benefits.