Principal Engineer, UI Platform & Experiences

Role overview

Principal Engineer (Principal IC) for the UI Platform & Experiences team at Tripleseat. You will own the foundation for an AI-native front-end experience and lead the modernization of the Tripleseat UI platform.

Responsibilities

• Build the UI platform & component system to rapidly enable Tripleseat AI features.
• Architect components on top of shadcn/ui, Radix primitives, and Tailwind.
• Define theming, design tokens, composition patterns, and accessibility baselines across the product.
• Design AI-native UX patterns including:
  • streaming responses
  • tool-calling surfaces
  • inline assistance
  • agentic flows
  • human-in-the-loop review
• Own the Tripleseat UI MCP server to enable agentic workflows and LLM-powered tooling to interact with UI components and product surfaces.
• Build agentic workflows for automated UI migration, component adoption, and ongoing UI consistency.
• Lead the Kendo → shadcn migration and collapse two front-end codebases into one.
• Partner with Product and Design to redesign the UX for clarity, speed, and ease of use.
• Set and drive front-end engineering standards (including performance budgets/craft bar) across ~36 engineers.
• Establish and drive adoption of front-end testing standards:
  • component testing
  • visual regression
  • end-to-end coverage
• Champion AI-native development workflows (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) to drive measurable throughput improvements.
• Mentor senior engineers and lead design reviews to raise UI quality org-wide.

Requirements (must-haves)

• 10+ years building production UIs at SaaS scale.
• Strong hands-on expertise in React 18, TypeScript, Tailwind, Radix, and modern front-end tooling.
• Production experience with shadcn/ui (not just prototypes).
• Shipped AI-powered UX in production (e.g., LLM streaming UIs, tool-call flows, agentic interfaces, or RAG surfaces).
• Fluency with AI-native dev workflows (Cursor, Claude Code, or equivalent) with demonstrated throughput gains.
• Strong testing philosophy and hands-on experience with component, visual regression, and end-to-end testing.
• Track record leading large front-end migrations without stalling product velocity.
• Strong design sensibility and collaboration mindset (high standards, low ego, mentor/lead effectively).