# Founding Design Engineer — Dealix (Hire #1)

> **Compensation**: 30,000–45,000 SAR/month + 0.5–2.0% equity (vesting 4yr / 1yr cliff)
> **Location**: Riyadh-primary, hybrid accepted
> **Reports to**: Founder
> **Start**: Within 60 days of offer

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## The role

You will own the **Signature layer** of Dealix — the Approval Card, Evidence Pack viewer, Executive Room, and the Arabic-first design system. You translate conviction ("Arabic enterprise deserves Stripe-level polish") into code every day.

This is not a "designer who codes a little." It's an engineer who designs. You ship components, not mockups. You own the design system, the tokens, the RTL behaviour, the empty states, the error states, the motion.

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## What you will do in the first 90 days

1. Stand up the `@dealix/design-system` package with primitive + semantic tokens (scaffold exists at `packages/design-system/`).
2. Ship the **Approval Card** component — the pattern used across Approvals, Evidence, and Executive Room.
3. Achieve Lighthouse ≥95 on 5 core routes in both LTR and RTL.
4. Eliminate all axe-core critical + serious violations (V007 baseline).
5. Partner with Founder on weekly pilot customer UX sessions and turn learnings into shipped fixes within 7 days.

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## Requirements

- 4+ years shipping production React + TypeScript. Next.js 14+ or similar.
- Deep Tailwind or CSS-in-JS, comfortable with design tokens and theming.
- Built or contributed to a component library used by ≥3 apps.
- Proven work with RTL/Arabic typography (or fluent Arabic + demonstrable taste).
- Ship velocity: can point to 3 components you took from figma→merged in <1 week.

### Nice to have
- Motion design (Framer Motion, Lottie)
- Storybook + Chromatic / Percy
- Design tool fluency (Figma)
- WCAG 2.1 AA familiarity

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## Signals we want to see in your application

- Link to the component you are proudest of (code + live preview)
- Screenshot of an RTL flow you designed or shipped
- 200-word opinion on "what's wrong with enterprise SaaS UI in the Arab world"
- One product you think is beautifully designed + one sentence on why

## Signals we do NOT want

- "Full-stack dev who does everything including design" — this role needs depth, not breadth.
- Portfolio consisting entirely of marketing sites.
- No example of production shipped software.

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## Interview loop (3 stages, max 5 hours total)

1. **Intro** (45 min) — Founder. Values fit, story check, mutual expectations.
2. **Portfolio review** (60 min) — Walk through 3 shipped projects. Trade-offs taken, what you would redo.
3. **Paid trial task** (3–4 hours, 2,000 SAR compensation) — Take an existing Dealix screen (Approval Center) and produce:
   - A design rationale doc (1 page)
   - A refactored component PR against our codebase

No whiteboarding. No algorithm puzzles.

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## Why you might want this

- Arabic enterprise SaaS is a generational opportunity and Dealix is attacking it head-on.
- You will be Hire #1 of product. Your fingerprint is permanent.
- Founder-grade equity in a real category (not a me-too).
- Work in Arabic + English every day with customers who ship real deals.

## Why you might NOT want this

- 90-day runway mindset. We ship weekly, retro Fridays, no "strategy decks in lieu of shipping."
- You will talk to pilot customers directly. If "talking to customers" sounds draining, skip this role.
- We do not accept "design debt" as a phase. We refactor as we go.

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## Apply

Send to: founder@dealix.sa
Subject: `Founding Design Engineer — [Your Name]`
Body: portfolio links + the 200-word opinion. No resume needed yet (we'll ask at stage 2).