Design engineering for early-stage B2B startups
Your product has rough edges. The papercuts that slow users down, generate support tickets, and make your UI feel unfinished next to competitors. Your team knows they're there. Nobody has the time or the skill to fix them.
I'm Bryan King, a designer and engineer. Amoeba is just me. One guy covering what usually takes three hires: product, design, and front end engineering.
An amoeba is a single cell that does the work of a whole organism. It moves, adapts, and reshapes itself around whatever it meets. That's the idea here: one person who flexes to fit what your team needs, whether that's shaping what to build, designing it, or shipping the code.
For you, that means no handoffs and nothing lost in translation. The person thinking through the problem is the person designing it and the person writing the code. Work moves faster because it never has to be explained to anyone, and it ships better because a single point of view carries it from idea to merge.
Most design subscriptions create more work for your engineering team. Amoeba eliminates that step entirely.
How it works
You add tasks to a shared queue and prioritize them however you work — Linear, GitHub Issues, Notion, a doc. I take the top task, design and build it directly in your stack, and open a PR within 60 hours. Your team reviews and merges. Once it's in, I pull the next task. Two tasks a week, shipped straight to prod.
Nothing merges without your sign-off. No surprises on delivery day.
If you're not sure what to put in the queue, I offer a UI audit that walks through your core user flows and surfaces exactly where to look. And if your queue ever runs dry, I can spend time loading it with prioritized recommendations before I start work.
What's in scope
UI polish and papercut fixes, interaction improvements, component building and design system work, accessibility, front end performance. If your app outputs HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, it's fair game regardless of framework.
Net new features that require product definition and multiple sprints are out of scope for the subscription — but if that's what you need, I offer other ways to work together.
$6,000 a month
One active task at a time. Two tasks per week. Shipped straight to prod via pull request. Pause or cancel anytime.
Ways I work with your team
Most design subscriptions hand work to your engineers and call it done. Amoeba doesn't — the work ships as merged code, not as a backlog item. And what that work looks like depends entirely on your team.
Some teams have a designer who needs someone to build what they spec. Some have strong backend engineers pushing features behind flags who need someone to make the front end actually good. Some have nobody thinking about design at all and need all of it.
I flex to fit. If your backend engineer just shipped a feature behind a flag, I take the front end from functional to polished without touching the logic. If you have a designer, I'm the bridge between their intent and what ships. If you don't, I'm your designer — full design judgment on every task, not just implementation.
The common thread is that the output is always working front end code, ready to merge.
FAQs
What counts as a task? Anything that can be scoped, designed, and built in a day or two — a component redesign, a new UI state, an interaction fix, a design system addition. If a task turns out to be larger than expected once I'm into it, I'll flag it before I'm deep in and we'll scope it down or handle it differently. No surprises on delivery day.
What stacks do you work in? If it runs in a browser, I can work in it. React, Vue, Ruby on Rails — anything that outputs HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. If you're not sure, bring it up on the call.
Do you work alongside my existing designers? Yes. If you have a designer, I build what they spec and close the gap between their intent and what actually ships — without creating more work for your engineering team. If you don't have a designer, I am your designer. I bring full design judgment to every task, not just implementation.
How do I give you codebase access? Once we've talked and you're ready to start, I'll ask to be added as a collaborator on your GitHub or GitLab repo. No special tooling or setup required.
How quickly can we start? Usually within a few days of our call. We'll agree on how you want to manage the queue and I'll pull the first task once it's set up.
What if I don't like the work? Revisions are just tickets. Add it to the top of the queue and I'll address it next. The PR review process also means nothing merges without your team's sign-off.
What if my codebase is a mess? That's most codebases at your stage. I've worked in legacy systems, half-finished design systems, and codebases built by five different contractors. I'll work with what you have and leave it cleaner than I found it.
What if I run out of tasks? Harder than it sounds. I offer a UI audit that walks through your core user flows and surfaces exactly where to look. And if your queue ever runs dry, I can load it with prioritized recommendations before I start work.
How is this different from a design subscription like Designjoy? Most design subscriptions hand off Figma files that then sit in your engineering backlog waiting to be built. I skip that step — the output is always working front-end code, ready to merge. You get the design and the implementation, shipped straight to prod.
Is there a minimum commitment? No. Pause or cancel anytime, no notice required.
Do you need Figma files or design assets to get started? No. If you have them I'll use them. If you don't, I'll work directly from your live product and existing UI patterns.