Jan 2025–present
Block
Principal Design Engineer
Designing and building goose and berd, working prototypes, and tools for bringing brand judgment into AI-generated work.
nahiyan khan
tldr
I am a design engineering leader with a hands-on view of both disciplines. I work from product direction through production code, so my design decisions are informed by how software behaves, and my engineering decisions by the experience I want people to have.
today
I work at Block and am redefining software creation. We build generative UI systems, code-first design workflows, and open-source agent environments to enable real-time human and AI collaboration.
yesterday
At Cash App, I stood up its design systems practice, architecting a code-first system that drives 95% of its surfaces for 60 million users.
about
at work
I’m a principal design engineer at Block. I work on product direction, visual and interaction design, and the engineering that makes them real.
I develop ideas through working prototypes and stay involved through production. Depending on the problem, that means tuning a drag interaction, building the backend behind an interface, or designing a system other teams can build on.
Agents are part of my daily practice. I put care into their context, tools, and constraints, then review the architecture, behavior, and details of what we build.
capabilities
- practice
- Product direction · Visual design · Interaction and motion · Prototyping · Zero-to-one products · Technical R&D
- systems
- Agent architecture · Context and retrieval · Generative UI · Cross-platform design systems
- build with
- TypeScript · React · Node.js · HTML/CSS · Python · Rust · Next.js · Electron · Tauri
experience
2022–2025
Cash App
Staff Design Engineer
Helped establish Arcade, connecting design decisions to shared tooling and code across platforms.
-
2018–2022
ADP
Senior Design Engineer
-
2013–2018
Pearson
Senior Product Designer
-
2010–2013
Macalester
Graphic Designer
education
-
2019–2022
Johns Hopkins University
MS, Software Engineering
-
2009–2013
Macalester College
BA, Math and Computer Science
outside of work
I tinker, obsess over interior design, and climb to blow off steam. I read a lot of science fiction and dabble in writing it.
My partner and I want to buy land with a stream someday.