nahiyan khan
tldr
I’m a principal design engineer focused on agentic products and AI-native design infrastructure. I shape how people work with agents and build the interfaces and systems behind those experiences.
today
At Block, I co-founded the Design Intelligence team. I work on agent environments, generative UI prototypes, and tools that give agents relevant brand context. My work spans product exploration, systems architecture, implementation, and adoption.
yesterday
At Cash App, I established the design systems engineering practice and architected a code-first ecosystem across Figma, iOS, Android, and Web. We scaled the system to 95% of product surfaces, serving 60 million users.
about
how I work
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.
I lead generative UI R&D, from working prototypes and testing through adoption in Cash App and Square. My work includes composable UI fragments, platform-specific renderers, and UI libraries as model context.
Agents are part of my daily practice. I shape their context, tools, and constraints, then review what we build. I’m responsible for the architecture, behavior, and details.
what I do
- design
- Product direction · Visual design · Interaction and motion
- build
- Agent environments · Generative UI · Brand-context retrieval · Design infrastructure
- work with
- TypeScript · React · Node.js · Python · Rust · Electron · Tauri
outside of work
I like building small, powerful computers. I enjoy the challenge of fitting everything into less space and making it beautiful.
I obsess over interior design, take photographs, 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.
