Product Design Lead, Design Systems

About the company

Our client is a workforce software company bringing HR, IT and finance into one unified platform. Its 40+ products help businesses manage everything from payroll and hiring to devices and expenses. The company invests heavily in design systems so these products feel like one connected experience.

The role / why it matters

As Product Design Lead, Design Systems, you will shape the patterns and design language used across the entire platform. This is a hands-on Staff/Principal-level individual contributor role with broad strategic ownership. You will partner with approximately 18 dedicated engineers and help define an AI-native approach to design quality, prototyping and implementation.

What you'll do

• Design scalable, repeatable interaction patterns, UX flows and frameworks that go beyond component and token libraries.
• Build patterns that work across dense product experiences and the growing mobile design system.
• Develop AI-driven systems that define, measure and check design quality against shared standards.
• Create AI prototyping tools and code-based checks that help teams produce high-quality implementations.
• Own platform-wide initiatives from identifying a problem and setting strategy through hands-on prototyping and delivery.
• Work closely with engineers, product managers and designers to improve craft and the platform's design language.
• Raise the quality of work across teams while remaining an active practitioner.

Requirements

What we're looking for

• 8-20 years of product design or design systems experience, with approximately 12 years a strong fit for the role's scope.
• Prior Staff, Principal or Lead-level responsibility and the ability to combine vision and strategy with hands-on individual contributor work.
• Experience designing systems, repeatable interaction patterns and UX frameworks for complex B2B platforms, horizontal architectures or developer tools.
• Practical use of AI-assisted coding and prototyping tools such as Cursor, Claude Code or Codex; comfort working close to code rather than relying only on static design files.
• Strong visual, interaction and user experience craft, including accessibility expertise.
• A portfolio showing pattern-level work beyond basic component or token libraries, with clear ownership, trade-offs and outcomes.
• Autonomy, pace and the ability to identify problems, bring partners together and drive solutions without heavy process.
• Bonus points
• Experience at companies known for strong consumer or mobile design.
• Ownership of a complex design system within a large organization.
• Experience building AI-native design systems or tools that automate design-quality evaluation.
• Strong mobile interaction craft alongside experience with dense enterprise products.