Design / Micro-Interaction Engineer — Porter · Inference Search Partners

Design / Micro-Interaction
Engineer

$200K – $280K + Equity 📍 New York City 🏢 In-Person · 5 Days/Week Series A · Actively Hiring
About Porter

The infrastructure platform for the next generation of software.

Porter is a Platform as a Service that runs inside your own cloud account. Connect AWS, GCP, or Azure — Porter handles everything underneath: autoscaling, CI/CD, networking, SSL, rollbacks, observability, and GPU workloads. Teams go from git to production in 60 seconds, with no migration as they scale. Founded in 2020, Porter went through YC S20 and became a top-5 most popular dev tool in YC history.

$20M
Series A · Jan 2026 · FirstMark
ARR growth since 2022
Top 5
YC dev tool, all time
Profitable · ~26 people · NYC
Tennr (Series C) Nooks (Series B) ModelML Giga Outtake Homelight (Series D) Getaround (post-IPO) YC portfolio companies AI-native startups

"Porter supports companies ranging from YC startups to post-IPO and $1B+ revenue businesses. Many of these companies started on Porter and have never left."

— FirstMark Capital, Series A announcement · January 2026


The Founders

Built by engineers who lived the problem.

JR
Justin Rhee — Co-Founder & CEO
Your direct manager for this role
Penn CS & Philosophy grad. Justin is the product and design mind behind Porter's experience. FirstMark describes him as "one of the most incisive product thinkers and first principles operators we've come across." The Design Engineer reports directly to him — he is Porter's design lead.
TS
Trevor Shim — Co-Founder
Systems & Infrastructure
Systems and infrastructure engineer behind Porter's Kubernetes architecture and cloud integrations. Trevor and Justin met building remote dev tooling, went through YC S20 together, and have been running Porter since 2020.

Funding

Backed by investors who understand infrastructure at scale.

$20M — Series A
Led by FirstMark Capital (David Waltcher & Amish Jani) · Venrock, Soma Capital, Translink Capital participating
FirstMark also backs Vercel and ClickHouse — the same investor who bet on Vercel is now betting on Porter.
January 2026
$1.5M — Seed
Y Combinator · Venrock · Soma Capital · Translink Capital · Angels
2021
YC S20
Top-5 most popular dev tool in YC history
2020

The Role

First dedicated Design Engineer at Porter — working directly with the co-founder.

Porter is hiring their first Design / Micro-Interaction Engineer to elevate the product experience to the standard of Vercel, Linear, and Raycast. You'll work directly with Justin Rhee (Co-Founder + Design Lead) to close the gap between design intent and what ships in production.

This is not a UI polish role. It's a high-craft engineering role where the output is working React code — animations that run at 60fps, interactions that feel intentional, components built to last. The bar is the last 10% of product quality that separates good from exceptional. The archetype Porter has in mind: Vercel's design engineering team.


What You'll Do
  • Build and ship polished UI components in React / TypeScript with production-quality animations and micro-interactions
  • Own the motion system — Framer Motion, CSS animation, GSAP — across Porter's web product and marketing surfaces
  • Lead Porter's upcoming rebrand rollout — the first major project for this hire, working directly with Justin on design direction and implementation
  • Own information architecture for Porter's core product flows — how users create, monitor, and manage infrastructure
  • Partner directly with Justin to translate design intent into crisp, delightful user experiences that reflect Porter's quality bar
  • Establish component patterns and interaction standards that scale as the product grows
  • Bring an AI-native workflow (Cursor, v0, Copilot) to accelerate implementation without sacrificing craft
  • Raise the product's baseline quality — loading states, transitions, hover behaviors, empty states — the details that make tools feel right

What We're Looking For
  • 5+ years in a design engineering, frontend engineering, or creative technologist role
  • A strong portfolio — work that demonstrates you can build what you design, implemented in code, not just prototyped
  • Deep fluency in React, TypeScript, and CSS — you write production code, not just demos
  • Hands-on experience with animation libraries (Framer Motion, GSAP, or equivalent)
  • Experience at a developer-tools, B2B SaaS, or product-forward company — you understand the user
  • An eye for interaction design and a genuine obsession with the craft of UI
  • Comfortable shipping in a small, fast-moving team — you don't wait for complete specs

Compensation

Competitive package at a company with real upside.

Base Salary $200,000 – $280,000+

Equity Meaningful equity grant

Location New York City · 5 days in-person

Time Off 30 days PTO · 30 days remote

Visa Sponsorship Yes

Relocation Flights + hotel covered for onsite

Why Join Porter

Small team. Critical infrastructure. Real stakes.

🚀
Series A momentum
$20M raised in January 2026 from FirstMark. Capital to hire, build product, and grow — without existential pressure.
🏗️
Greenfield scope
~26 people total. First design engineer shapes the entire product aesthetic. Every person has outsized impact.
AI infrastructure wave
Every AI startup needs reliable infra from day one. Porter is positioned as the default platform for the next generation of builders.
🎯
Work directly with Justin
Report to the co-founder and design lead. High trust, fast feedback loops, no layers. Your work ships.
💰
$200K–$280K + equity
Competitive comp at a company with real revenue, real customers, and real upside in the equity.
🗽
NYC, in-person
Fully in-person in New York City. The kind of team where you build fast, get feedback fast, and feel the energy.

Managed by Shwetha Alampalli · Inference Search Partners