Design Systems Lead

An established financial services organization in Virginia is seeking a Design Systems Lead to guide design-system strategy, governance, and adoption for a platform environment while partnering closely across design, engineering, product, and accessibility teams.

About the Opportunity:

• Schedule: Monday to Friday


• Hours: Standard business


• Setting: Hybrid (at least 3 days a week onsite; Remote work is an option for the right candidate)

Responsibilities:

• Define and evolve the platform design-system roadmap in alignment with product priorities, accessibility expectations, and enterprise design guidance


• Drive adoption of approved design patterns, components, design tokens, documentation, and contribution practices


• Establish and maintain governance, intake processes, contribution workflows, and decision criteria for the design system


• Partner with design, front-end engineering, product, accessibility, and leadership stakeholders to support consistent implementation


• Assess implementation feasibility, identify gaps in component libraries and documentation, and translate standards into actionable guidance

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in design systems, product design, design operations, front-end engineering, or a related digital product discipline


• Demonstrated experience leading, governing, or significantly contributing to design-system adoption for a platform, product area, or large-scale digital experience


• Working knowledge of HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and component frameworks such as React or Vue


• Experience with design tokens, theming systems, and component-library architecture


• Understanding of CI/CD and design-system delivery processes, including build, testing, release, versioning, dependency, documentation, and quality workflows


• Strong understanding of UI/UX principles, accessibility, inclusive design, and WCAG standards


• Experience with Figma and documentation platforms such as Storybook or Zeroheight


• Strong communication, facilitation, stakeholder management, leadership, and change-management skills

Desired Skills:

• Experience partnering with front-end engineering teams on component libraries, design-token pipelines, CI/CD, release governance, or documentation automation


• Hands-on experience creating prototypes, implementation examples, or component documentation using HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Vue, or similar technologies


• Experience working within a hybrid design-system model, adapting enterprise standards for platform-specific implementation


• Mobile or cross-platform design-system experience with React Native, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, or similar frameworks


• Background in design operations, design tooling, documentation strategy, or platform-level design-system governance


• Experience with accessibility audits, design-system quality reviews, adoption measurement, or contribution-model improvements


• Contributions to open-source design systems, UI libraries, or reusable internal platform libraries