People
A directory of design engineers and voices shaping the role. Practitioners featured in the wiki's sources, plus a curated "respected list." Individuals can graduate to their own page as coverage deepens.
Featured in sources
- Mariana Castilho — designer-turned-design-engineer (Vercel, Pierre); creator of the UI Labs project; advocate of "build first, learn what you need" and sharing work in public.4
- Karl Koch — practitioner whose "Tips for New Design Engineers" emphasizes the final 10%, the generalist shift under AI, and "build with vibes, ship with rigor."5
- Raphael Salaja — gave "The Rise of Design Engineering" at MIT Startup Week; frames the role as an interpreter "fighting slop," and teaches taste via Study / Note / Build.6
- Glenn Hitchcock & John Pham — Vercel design engineers; "bridge the design execution gap," "you don't need to be 50/50," and build reusable systems even for one-offs.7
- Ricky Zhang — author of the Ephemeral Design argument; also appears on the respected list below.3
- Matt Perry — creator of Motion; author of the Web Animation Performance Tier List.13
The respected list
A curated list of practitioners to follow.9
- Jakub Krehel — also authored "Details that make interfaces feel better" (see Resources).
- Emil Kowalski — interaction/animation focus.
- Rauno Freiberg
- Ricky Zhang
- Dan Hollick
- Jhey Tompkins — CSS/animation.
- Ryo Lu
- Gabriel Obholz
The roadmap source also points to Paco Coursey as a reference-quality practitioner portfolio.2