Product Design Lead - Design System - Direct Client - Remote - JOBID436

The ideal candidate will possess strong product and project management skills, adept at identifying and prioritizing opportunities to enhance the consistency of the customer experience.

Exceptional collaboration skills are essential for facilitating alignment on system components and driving adoption across multiple teams.

Success in this role requires fluency in the language of Design, Business, and Technology, enabling effective translation among all three domains.

Additionally, you will define common components and design patterns that embody our client's design principles and brand strategy throughout their consumer digital ecosystem.

Our client's approach to the design system is as a product, necessitating a deep understanding of digital design, UX, documentation, and the product development and creative processes.

Responsibilities :

Define Standards : Gather input across all product portfolios to refine and enhance a viable and scalable Design System that strengthens the brand through consistency.

Lead a cross-portfolio, multi-disciplinary guild of team members contributing to the evolution of the system and drive decision-making on system standards and exceptions.

Product Management : Manage and prioritize the backlog and roadmap of system components and features using Jira in collaboration with the developer team.

Balance delivering minimum viable functionality with scalable system design, challenging the team on automation versus manual tasks.

Partner with Product Owners, designers, and developers to define the scope and timing of implementations.

Drive Excellence : Direct the process for the ongoing evolution of the system, aligning research activities to assess its efficacy.

Implement and facilitate regular reviews to evaluate the quality, consistency, and usefulness of system components, scheduling critique, planning, and review meetings.

Communication : Ensure all team members have access to necessary tools and guidelines to adopt the system. Regularly gather input from team members and key stakeholders to identify successes, challenges, and perspectives, synthesizing findings into specific recommendations for the backlog and roadmap.

Represent the system’s purpose, library, and process to other groups throughout the enterprise as needed.

Contract Primary Scope Delivery (Existing) :

Complete 10 existing stories with design dependencies.

Update 16 existing components (e.g., Input, Dropdown), addressing ADA compliance, dynamic sizing / flexibility, and additional functionality / states.

Update the Figma library of 395 components currently in production, including in-progress components, and complete documentation.

Finalize the design and documentation of 9 in-progress components in Figma, accounting for various individual component states (e.

g., hover, active / inactive, error).

Prioritize components with Accessibility requirements in the Figma backlog.

Contract Secondary Scope Delivery (Anticipated) : Address any new ADA remediation and respond to new requests for component updates.

Qualifications :

Hands-on experience and thorough understanding of Figma, including component design and design system best practices (variants and interactivity for prototyping), along with a working knowledge of front-end technologies (CSS, HTML, and JavaScript), and a willingness to learn more.

Prior experience launching design systems and collaborating with technical teams is required.

Exceptional communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate design decisions and rationale, explaining changes to squads and ensuring proper representation in experiences.

Experience presenting to diverse audiences, including senior leadership.

Experience establishing the rollout of updates and ensuring communication with design teams for component updates.

Strong analytical thinking skills with a proven ability to synthesize complex, interdependent, and sometimes competing requirements.

A thorough understanding of human-centered design principles, methods, and practices, with experience collaborating closely with UX designers.

Change management experience, including a track record of developing new processes and fostering mindset shifts within teams.

Experience navigating and influencing within large organizations.