Senior Product Designer – Design Systems

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California, +18 more states.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the design system roadmap, prioritizing based on product requirements, system health, and adoption challenges while ensuring alignment among stakeholders on a clear, forward-looking vision.

• Define and enhance system UX: components, patterns, interaction states, responsive behavior, motion, and accessibility defaults that can scale across various products and platforms.

• Oversee the complete token strategy (both primitive and semantic), which includes theming, density, and extensibility, and collaborate with engineering to uphold consistent component APIs.

• Implement robust governance and lifecycle management, establishing contribution standards, quality benchmarks, review procedures, versioning, deprecation strategies, and clear migration plans to minimize system drift.

• Develop implementation-aware specifications that include edge cases, constraints, usage guidance, and acceptance criteria; engage in component-based workflows (e.g., Figma libraries, Storybook) to guarantee fidelity from design to code.

• Foster design enablement within context through linting rules, templates, and plugin experiences, supported by a structured knowledge model (rules, constraints, examples) that facilitates automation and AI-assisted support.

• Intentionally utilize AI tools to streamline audits, consistency checks, migrations, and specification generation; contribute to AI-assisted workflows that enable teams to adopt changes securely.

• Assess adoption and impact, pinpoint workflow friction, and implement enablement programs aimed at reducing rework, enhancing consistency, and accelerating safe system evolution.

⛳️ Requirements

• A minimum of 6 years of experience in product design (or a similar role), which includes shipping and maintaining a design system utilized by multiple product teams.

• A portfolio that demonstrates mastery in design systems (components, patterns, tokens, governance) and cross-platform consistency; a portfolio link is mandatory.

• Technical proficiency in collaborating within component-based workflows (e.g., Figma component libraries and Storybook or similar) with a strong grasp of how implementation constraints influence UX.

• Practical experience with token pipelines and tools (e.g., CSS variables, semantic token architectures) and crafting implementation-aware specifications with acceptance criteria.

• Proven competency in accessibility applied to systems (e.g., WCAG 2.1 AA) with accessible defaults and patterns.

• Demonstrated use of AI/automation to enhance delivery speed and quality for design systems (e.g., audits, migration planning, consistency checks, spec generation).

• Experience in driving system adoption through metrics, deprecation/migration initiatives, and cross-functional enablement.

• A Bachelor’s degree in Design, HCI, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

🏝️ Benefits

• Instacart offers highly competitive compensation and benefits tailored to the market in each location where our employees are based.

• Eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants.

• Review our Flex First remote work policy for further details.

• Offers may vary based on various factors, such as candidate experience and skills.