# Sage James — Design Engineer

> Design engineer currently in Bozeman, MT, looking to relocate. On a seven-person in-house team, I did the competitive research, designed the component library, led the editor experience, and built the frontend for Montana State University's three-campus web platform — 800+ sites, 60,000 pages, 1,800 content editors, launching 2026. Studied apparel design at the University of Minnesota, then computer science at Montana State. Looking for a full-time role where design systems and accessibility matter; open to remote and to relocating, internationally included.

I work across design and code rather than handing off between them: component design in Figma, CSS architecture, and the frontend build. This site is Statamic on Laravel, designed and built by me.

## Case studies

- [Accessible by default](https://sagejames.dev/work/design-system): Bozeman, Billings and Northern each needed to look like themselves, without three codebases and without relying on editors to remember the accessibility rules.
- [Evidence at scale](https://sagejames.dev/work/accessibility): We were deciding what to build from what we could scan by hand, one page at a time, so system decisions rested on small samples and our own reading of dense standards.
- [One navigation system for every MSU site](https://sagejames.dev/work/information-architecture): MSU sites had no consistent wayfinding, so visitors got lost and couldn't retrace their steps and editors had no visible structure to keep their sites organized, because navigation was whatever each editor chose to build.

## Background

- [Project map](https://sagejames.dev/work): The two-year MSU platform rebuild in order, marked with the legs I worked on. Six other people covered ground of their own; the project manager held final creative and technical authority.
- [Resume](https://sagejames.dev/resume): Experience, skills, and education.
- [About](https://sagejames.dev/about): Fashion design background, senior thesis collection, photography, DJing, and how the fashion-to-code path actually went.

## Optional

- [Blog](https://sagejames.dev/blog): Writing on design systems and accessibility.
- [Coffee chat](https://sagejames.dev): A working chat agent on the homepage that answers questions about my work. I read every conversation.

## Contact

- sageajames1@gmail.com