Staff / Principal Product Design Lead, Design Systems
Talently · Canada
Apply & track with Apply Edge*hiring on behalf of our clientTitle: Staff / Principal Product Design Lead, Design SystemsTime: Full-Time
With over 40 products spanning payroll, HR, IT, expenses, and workforce management, their goal is to make a complex suite of applications feel like one seamless platform. Sit on top of a unified architecture, data flows dynamically between applications to give teams a shared source of truth, automated processes, and key insights to execute better and faster.Role OverviewAs a Staff / Principal Product Design Lead, Design Systems, you will help shape the design language and user experience across the entire platform. Moving beyond traditional component and token libraries, you will focus on design patterns, interaction models, and scalable experiences that connect dozens of products seamlessly. Working with a dedicated team of about 18 engineers, you will hold significant ownership from high-level strategy through to hands-on prototyping and execution in code using AI-assisted tools.Key Responsibilities
- Design scalable, repeatable UX patterns, interaction models, and flows that extend across all product verticals and the growing mobile design system.
- Help evolve and maintain a unified visual and interaction design language across web and mobile platforms.
- Build, prototype, and evaluate new platform experiences using AI-assisted coding and prototyping tools.
- Develop AI-driven tools and systems to define, measure, and enforce design quality standards across implementations.
- Take broad, complex, and ambiguous platform challenges from strategic concept through to execution and shipped product.
- Collaborate closely with product designers, engineers, and product managers to raise the overall quality and consistency of the user experience.
- Drive hands-on design and prototyping contributions rather than delegating tasks.
- Help establish scalable approaches to accessibility, interaction, and visual design across the organization.Qualifications
- 8 to 20 years of product design or design systems experience, with prior experience at a Staff, Principal, or Lead level.
- Proven track record of designing and scaling complex design systems, interaction patterns, and UX frameworks across dense B2B platforms or horizontal architectures.
- Strong visual, interaction, and user experience design craft with a portfolio demonstrating systems thinking.
- Experience with AI-assisted development and prototyping tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Claude, or ChatGPT.
- Hands-on approach to prototyping with comfort working closer to code to accelerate design workflows.
- Demonstrated expertise in web and mobile accessibility standards.
- High degree of autonomy with the ability to independently identify platform challenges, develop strategy, and execute solutions.Education & Experience
- 8+ years of experience in product design and design systems within complex tech environments.
- Experience at companies known for strong mobile or consumer-facing design experiences is preferred.