Gideon AwolesiWhere the role sits
A product designer works out what to build and how it should work, and hands the design to engineering. A front-end developer builds it. A design engineer does a bit of both, so the decisions made in the design survive into the code, because the same person makes them.
What the work looks like
In practice, it's a lot of design system work, coded prototypes, and the gap between the two. At Syndigo, engineering gave me access to the codebase, where I maintained the component and Code Connect files directly, so approved design decisions could reach production without anyone having to interpret them again.
Why there are more of us now
Right now, with how capable AI tools have become, I'm able to design and ship my own apps, from design in Figma all the way to production in the App Store and Play Store. A few years ago, that would have needed a team. The tools haven't replaced the design judgement, though. They've made it possible for one person who has it to take an idea a lot further.
The problems you only see when you ship
What a lot of people don't understand is that not all design problems are in the Figma file. Some of them only show up when you're actually shipping the product. For instance, in one of my apps, InvoiceRate, I had to design the App Store screenshots myself. I also had to design the screens for when Poland's KSeF system rejects an invoice, and the app is only connected to KSeF through an API. These are problems I didn't have when I was just a designer.