Surface Pattern Designer Jobs in Washington, DC (NOW HIRING)

Job Summary:
xFoundry Alliance is dedicated to addressing global challenges through innovative solutions and collaboration. They are seeking a frontend-focused full-stack software engineer to build user-facing systems for their venture development platform and AI-enabled workspaces, focusing on enhancing user experience and integrating complex workflows.
Responsibilities:
• Build high-quality application interfaces using Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Radix/shadcn-style component primitives
• Translate product and operational requirements into clear workflows for dashboards, profiles, event and program workflows, forms, tables, review screens, community and collaboration surfaces, and administrative tools
• Design frontend states that make complex behavior understandable: loading, streaming, partial completion, background work, user interruption, validation errors, and service failures
• Build rich forms and structured workflows with validation, optimistic updates, and clear error recovery
• Improve usability, responsiveness, accessibility, and visual consistency across xFoundry product surfaces
• Contribute to a component architecture and design system primitives that keep the product consistent and composable as it grows
• Integrate frontend workflows with backend APIs using GraphQL, REST, or comparable typed contract patterns
• Work with backend engineers to clarify request and response shapes, validation rules, permissions, error states, and data freshness expectations
• Use schema-first and type-safe patterns to reduce runtime surprises and keep frontend and backend behavior aligned
• Build client-side data flows using modern React patterns, server actions, SWR/React Query-style fetching, optimistic updates, and cache invalidation where appropriate
• Ensure application screens present data accurately, update predictably, and recover gracefully when services fail
• Build interfaces for AI-assisted workflows that are transparent, interruptible, and useful to real users
• Represent streaming output, tool activity, citations, generated files, clarification prompts, and task progress in ways that users can trust
• Build workspace-style UI for conversations, documents, files, generated outputs, and long-running workflows
• Collaborate with AI and backend engineers on the boundary between browser state, API streams, persisted thread and workflow state, and long-running tasks
• Help make advanced capabilities feel like product features rather than demos
• Write maintainable TypeScript with clear component boundaries, accessible interactions, and predictable state management
• Use testing and verification practices such as Vitest, React Testing Library, Playwright, or comparable tools to protect user-facing behavior
• Build observability and operational surfaces that help staff and engineers understand system health and user impact
• Monitor performance and user experience across real workflows, not only isolated components
• Participate in code reviews, debugging, and technical planning with a focus on root-cause fixes and product impact
Qualifications:
Required:
• Master's degree in a related field, or a bachelor's degree with 3+ years of exceptional experience
• 3+ years of professional experience
• Strong JavaScript/TypeScript and React experience
• Experience building production applications with Next.js or comparable full-stack frontend frameworks
• Strong understanding of component architecture, state management, accessibility, responsive design, and frontend performance
• Experience integrating frontend applications with GraphQL, REST, or other API contract patterns
• Comfort working with authenticated user experiences, permissions-aware UI, and production debugging
• Ability to communicate clearly with designers, backend engineers, AI engineers, and product stakeholders
Preferred:
• Next.js App Router, React Server Components, server actions, and modern React data boundaries
• Tailwind CSS, Radix UI, shadcn-style component systems, or comparable design-system primitives
• Schema-first validation and type-safe data flows using tools such as Zod, GraphQL code generation, OpenAPI, or comparable approaches
• SWR, React Query, optimistic updates, cache invalidation, and resilient async state management
• Streaming UI, SSE/WebSocket-style event flows, AI SDKs, assistant-style interfaces, or long-running workflow UX
• Vitest, React Testing Library, Playwright, Cypress, or other frontend testing tools
• Sentry or comparable observability tooling
• Experience building tools for education, entrepreneurship, research, knowledge work, data-heavy operations, or AI-assisted workflows
Company:
At xFoundry, we're on a mission to revolutionize higher education by turning universities into vibrant hubs of innovation. Founded in 2023, the company is headquartered in College Park, USA, with a team of 11-50 employees. The company is currently Early Stage.