Staff/Principal Design Systems Lead

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Establish the vision and direction for the design system based on the needs of builders and customers.

• Develop the foundational elements hands-on, encompassing architecture, components, guidance, and quality standards.

• Assemble and lead a team responsible for the design system.

• Recruit and nurture team members, prioritize tasks and ownership, provide direct feedback, and uphold high standards.

• Enhance Render’s visual and interaction design focusing on typography, hierarchy, density, motion, responsive behavior, accessibility, and edge states.

• Ensure the design system is comprehensible to AI through machine-readable documentation, agent-accessible rules and tokens, and AI-ready architecture.

• Collaborate with engineering to guide technical architecture concerning components, tokens, agent guidance discovery, and quality checks.

• Maintain a balance between flexibility, coherence, performance, and usability using layered and headless patterns as appropriate.

• Define and assess quality through repeatable evaluations of real tasks and AI-generated outputs.

• Promote adoption by collaborating with product teams and providing teaching through examples.

• Conduct experiments as models and tools evolve, adapting based on evidence.

• Report directly to the Head of Design.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proven history of setting direction and achieving results in design systems or design engineering.

• Desire to build a function from the ground up before taking on a leadership role.

• Outstanding visual and interaction design capabilities.

• Strong systems thinking and experience in creating systems that are adopted by other teams.

• High level of technical fluency.

• Proficiency in prototyping and coding.

• Knowledge of front-end architecture, including component API design, tokens, theming, and layered/headless patterns.

• Capability to navigate implementation trade-offs with engineers.

• Practical experience using AI in design tasks.

• Insight into AI-ready design systems.

• Understanding of the strengths and limitations of AI and strategies for enhancing its output.

• Strong product judgment and empathy towards developers.

• Fluency with developers and technical products is highly advantageous.

• Generally not eligible for new visa sponsorship; applicants requiring sponsorship must obtain business authorization.

🏝️ Benefits

• 4 weeks of paid vacation.

• 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all parents.

• Long-term disability insurance.

• Life insurance.

• 401K plans.

• 100% employer-paid medical coverage for you and a dependent.

• 99% employer-paid dental and vision coverage for you and a dependent.

• FSAs and HSAs.

• Monthly lifestyle stipend for wellness, mental health and therapy, hobbies, etc.

• Monthly cell phone and internet subsidy.

• Commuter benefits for Renders in the Bay Area.

• Home office stipends for remote Renders.

• Continuous learning benefits and related support.

• Equity.