Head of Design Systems

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**Job Overview**:
**Role summary**

We’re hiring a Head of Design Systems to lead the strategy, technology, and creative direction of our enterprise-wide design system that powers digital experiences across businesses and functions. This leader will be both a seasoned design craft practitioner and a strong engineering-minded platform owner—accountable for the visual digital brand, the system’s component library and code, governance, documentation, and adoption. You’ll manage a global, multi-disciplinary team of designers, design technologists/developers, strategists, writers, and producers, and you’ll own our design and research tool portfolio (e.g., Figma Enterprise, research/analytics platforms). A deep understanding of AI (generative AI and agentic AI) and digital accessibility is essential to transform our platform into an AI-powered, scalable foundation that accelerates innovative, creative, compliant delivery in a regulated environment.
- **What**you’ll** do**
- **Vision, strategy, and governance**- Set the multi-year vision and roadmap for the enterprise design system—covering design tokens, components, patterns, documentation, and platform services—aligned to business priorities, risk, digital accessibility, and engineering strategy.-
- Establish and chair cross-functional governance (Design, Product, Engineering, Brand, Accessibility, Compliance, Security, and Architecture) with clear contribution and change-management models.-
- Define adoption strategy, KPIs/OKRs, and incentives to drive measurable outcomes across lines of business and functions.

** Platform consolidation & migration (multi-system unified platform)**- Inventory and assess existing/legacy design systems across businesses/functions (tokens, components, code stacks, documentation quality, accessibility posture, and adoption).-
- Define a convergence strategy: token mapping & theming, component equivalence matrix, de-duplication rules, and brand harmonization guidelines.-
- Create a phased migration plan with success criteria, deprecation timelines, risk controls, and a documented rollback path.-
- Provide tooling and automation (e.g., codemods, lint rules, UI audits, visual-regression baselines) to accelerate safe migration.-
- Stand up a contribution/exception process and a comms plan, with dashboards to track migration progress and impact.

** System architecture & engineering excellence**- Lead engineering for the system’s codebase (e.g., Web Components/React/Angular, TypeScript, Storybook, CI/CD, package distribution/registries) and partner with Architecture on standards: design tokens, theming, motion, internationalization (i18n) and right-to-left (RTL) support.-
- Ensure quality through automated testing (unit/visual regression), performance budgets, security scans, and a versioning/release strategy (safe migrations, deprecation policies).-
- Integrate the system into product pipelines (e.g., GitHub/GitLab and internal developer portals) to reduce design-to-engineering friction and improve time-to-market, with opinionated pull/merge templates, required reviewers, and branch protections.

** Art direction & brand stewardship**- Serve as the art director and custodian of our digital visual brand—color, typography, iconography, motion, and imagery—ensuring brand consistency and accessibility across channels.-
- Guide creative expression across retail, commercial, institutional, and employee experiences, balancing brand distinctiveness with regulatory and accessibility requirements.

** AI-powered platform & automation**- Agentic workflows for design-to-code, pattern suggestions, component development and migration, unit testing, and knowledge & documentation playbooks.-
- Automated accessibility controls (e.g., token-level contrast rules, Axe/Lighthouse CI, alt-text and content checks) embedded in design and build pipelines.-
- Knowledge & retrieval over documentation and usage guidelines (RAG), plus evaluation frameworks, guardrails, and auditability to meet model-governance expectations.

** Design operations, tooling, and research**- Own the portfolio of design and research tools (e.g., Figma Enterprise libraries/branching/tokens plugins; platforms like Matomo / UserTesting / Qualtrics) including licensing, supplier management, financials, and workflow standards.-
- Define contribution workflows, templates, and content standards for documentation sites; ensure discoverability and self-service onboarding.

** Accessibility, compliance, and risk**- Embed WCAG (latest versions) and regional requirements into tokens, components, patterns, and governance—treating accessibility as a default.-
- Partner with Legal/Compliance, InfoSec, Model Risk, a