The people between design and the codebase. They build what they drew, and care how it feels at 60fps.
I started hiring design engineers in London when few teams had one. Some lean design, some lean engineering, and the CV doesn’t always tell you which. I work out which one your team needs before anyone is interviewed. Some of the best don’t have the title yet. They’re listed as front-end engineers, and their own site gives them away.
“Design engineering is a relatively young discipline and is often poorly understood, including within recruitment. Jakob demonstrated a rare and nuanced understanding of the field.”
From the first designer in a start-up to a senior hire in a team of forty.
Seven years in design recruitment. In previous roles I've worked with start-ups like Granola, Jack & Jill, Plasma, Axiom and Tracelight, and bigger names like Nespresso. Same rule either way. The work speaks first, and I only send people I’d back in the room.
“Jakob understood the requirements for our product design hire from the very first conversation. The quality of candidates presented was outstanding.”
I started in design recruitment in 2019, and spent most of it running permanent and contract design hiring in London. I started hone to focus on the part I love, finding the right people.
Portfolios that made me stop scrolling lately, and what I noticed in them. A few at a time.
Portfolios that made me stop scrolling lately, and what I noticed in them. A few at a time.
The case studies aren’t screenshots. They’re the interfaces themselves: an inbox you can click through, its variants side by side, the same screen at three widths. You see how he thinks, not just what he shipped.
A portfolio told as an illustrated book: seven chapters, a contents page, plates, and a music box. His tools sit in the workshop chapter as specimens, and they start moving when you hover. On a phone they go by themselves.
His name set in pixel blackletter, metadata in square brackets, a dot-matrix globe while it loads. A software engineer with a type designer’s eye, and he’s building an open-source font editor on the side.
Nobody pays to be here, and nobody asked. If you think your site belongs in the next issue, or someone else’s does, send it to jakob@honetalentgroup.com.
How hone handles personal data, in plain words.
hone is the trading name of Hone Talent Ltd, a recruitment business placing product designers and design engineers. Hone Talent Ltd is registered in England and Wales (company number 17238170), registered office 216 Richmond Road, Kingston upon Thames KT2 5HF. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, registration number ZC282898.
Hone Talent Ltd is the controller of the personal data described here. Questions, requests or complaints: Jakob Fiedler, jakob@honetalentgroup.com.
Candidates, including people we contact about a role: name, contact details, location, CV, portfolio and links, work history, skills, salary and notice expectations, right-to-work status, notes from our conversations, and the roles we’ve discussed.
Clients and their contacts: name, job title, company, contact details, notes from conversations, the roles we’re working on, and billing details.
Website visitors: basic usage data collected by our website platform, such as pages viewed, browser type and approximate location. Our site has no forms. If you email us, we hold your email and what you send.
Most candidate data comes from you. We also find people through what they have chosen to make public about their work: LinkedIn, GitHub, personal websites and portfolios, design and tech events, and recommendations from people who know them. If we found you this way, we tell you when we first get in touch and point you to this notice.
We don’t make decisions about you by automated means alone. We use software, including AI tools, to help organise notes and draft messages. A person (Jakob) reviews everything that’s sent and makes every decision.
We never sell your data. Some of these providers are based in, or store data in, the US. Where data leaves the UK, it is protected by the UK’s data bridge with the US or by the UK’s standard data transfer contracts.
You can ask us to show you the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, limit how we use it, or give you a copy to take elsewhere. You can object to us using your data, and you can tell us to stop contacting you about roles at any time; we will. Email jakob@honetalentgroup.com and we’ll reply within a month.
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office: ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113. We’d appreciate the chance to put it right first.
Our website uses cookies that it needs to work, and cookies that count visits so we can see which pages are read. These statistical cookies don’t identify you, and you can switch them off using the cookie banner or your browser settings. The site also remembers your Flat or Water choice for the full stop in your own browser. It isn’t sent to us.
Noticed features portfolios we admire, using only what their owners have published. If you’d like your work removed or a detail changed, email us and we’ll do it straight away.
We’ll update this notice when how we use data changes, and change the date at the top.