Design System Lead
Role details
Job location
Tech stack
Job description
The Platform Design Systems Lead is responsible for the strategic development, governance, and adoption of design-system practices for an assigned platform. This role ensures platform-specific design tokens, components, patterns, and documentation stay aligned with enterprise guidance. The position enables scalable, consistent, and accessible digital experiences by fostering shared patterns, reusable guidance, and sustainable design-to-development workflows., * Define and evolve the platform design-system roadmap in alignment with product goals and enterprise guidance.
- Champion design-system adoption within the assigned platform, driving consistent use of approved patterns, tokens, and components.
- Represent platform needs and feedback in design-system conversations to ensure practical platform implementation.
- Partner with platform design, engineering, product, and accessibility stakeholders to ensure solutions meet user and business needs.
- Maintain platform-level governance models, contribution workflows, and scalable processes.
- Apply working knowledge of front-end technologies to evaluate implementation feasibility and support collaboration with engineering partners.
- Build and maintain platform documentation in tools such as Storybook and Zeroheight.
- Create training, workshops, and support materials to onboard platform teams and promote best practices.
- Plan and conduct regular platform audits for design consistency, code alignment, and accessibility conformance.
Requirements
Experience: 5+ years of experience in design systems, product design, design operations, front-end engineering, or a related digital product discipline. A proven track record of leading, governing, or significantly contributing to design-system adoption for a product area, platform, or large-scale digital experience is required.
Technical Skills: A working knowledge of front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern component frameworks or libraries such as React or Vue is necessary. Familiarity with design token management, theming systems, and component-library architecture is expected. An understanding of CI/CD concepts relevant to design-system delivery, including build, test, release, versioning, and documentation workflows, is also required. Experience with design tools such as Figma and documentation platforms such as Storybook or Zeroheight is needed.
Other Skills: The role requires the ability to identify technical and process gaps and collaborate with designers, developers, and product partners. A strong understanding of design principles, UI/UX best practices, accessibility standards (including WCAG), and inclusive digital experience practices is essential. Excellent communication, facilitation, leadership, and change-management skills are required.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience partnering with front-end engineering teams on component-library workflows, design token pipelines, or CI/CD practices.
- Hands-on experience creating front-end prototypes or implementation examples using technologies like HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, or Vue.
- Experience supporting a hybrid design-system model where enterprise guidance is adapted into platform-specific practices.
- Experience with mobile or cross-platform design-system considerations, including React Native, SwiftUI, or Jetpack Compose.
- Background in design operations, design tooling, documentation strategy, or platform-level design-system governance.
- Experience supporting accessibility audits, design-system quality reviews, or adoption measurement.
- Contributions to open-source design systems, UI libraries, or reusable internal platform libraries.