Contract Design Systems Lead

📋 Description

• We are looking for a Design Systems Lead to join our team on a 3-6-month contract, starting immediately.

• This role is critical in establishing, repairing, and scaling our design system, ensuring consistency, usability, and efficiency across multiple brands.

• You will be responsible for quickly getting our design system off the ground, creating scalable, accessible, and high-quality UI components in Figma, and collaborating closely with front-end engineers to build a semantic layer that enables theming and multi-brand support.

• You will be the primary owner of our design system, driving its adoption and ensuring seamless integration into our product teams' workflows.

• Build, refine, and scale a comprehensive, multi-brand design system from the ground up, ensuring consistency across our products.

• Develop and maintain a robust, reusable, and accessible Figma component library, leveraging auto-layout, variants, and tokens for maximum flexibility.

• Establish design principles, guidelines, and documentation to enable designers, engineers, and stakeholders to use the system efficiently.

• Partner closely with front-end engineers to define a semantic layer that enables theming, ensuring that the design system scales across multiple brands.

• Implement design tokens and structured UI foundations to create a seamless bridge between design and code.

• Audit and repair existing design system components, identifying inconsistencies and improving usability and performance.

• Advocate for best practices in accessibility, responsiveness, and scalable UI patterns, ensuring inclusivity and usability.

• Act as the primary point of contact for the design system, guiding adoption, training teams, and providing support as needed.

🎯 Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in Product Design, UI/UX, or Design Systems, with a focus on building and scaling design systems.

• Deep expertise in Figma, including auto-layout, components, variants, design tokens, and documentation workflows.

• Strong understanding of atomic design principles, accessibility standards (WCAG), and front-end frameworks (React, CSS, design tokens, theming approaches).

• Proven experience collaborating with front-end developers to implement design systems in code.

• Strong ability to balance speed with quality, ensuring the system is quickly operational while maintaining scalability.

• Excellent communication and documentation skills, with the ability to advocate for design system adoption across cross-functional teams.

• Experience working in agile, fast-moving product environments, particularly within multi-brand or multi-product organizations.

• Self-starter with the ability to drive initiatives independently while aligning with broader product and brand goals.