Design Systems Lead

Imprint • New York, NY

3d • $190,000 - $210,000

About The Position

Imprint is seeking a Design Systems Lead to define and drive the long-term vision and roadmap for their design system. This role involves partnering deeply with Product Design, Engineering, Product Management, and AI teams to ensure system components are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with shared priorities. The lead will establish governance, contribution models, and decision-making frameworks to provide a shared source of truth for product teams, enabling them to move faster without sacrificing quality or consistency. A key aspect of the role is evolving the design system beyond traditional tools towards machine-readable, AI-consumable foundations that connect design tooling, code generation, and AI-assisted development. The position also includes mentoring a small team of design systems designers and partnering with developers to raise the bar on systems thinking and ownership. The lead will remain hands-on by contributing to component architecture, documentation, patterns, and guidelines, and by leading complex initiatives from strategy through execution.

Requirements

• 8+ years of product design experience, including significant design systems ownership and experience leading or managing design systems teams.
• Demonstrated success building and scaling design systems used across multiple product teams in a production environment.
• Deep understanding of component architecture, design tokens, accessibility standards, and design-to-development workflows.
• Strong product judgment with the ability to prioritize high-impact work and make tradeoffs between near-term product needs and long-term system investments.
• Experience partnering closely with frontend engineers and engineering leadership to ship system components that are actually adopted and trusted.
• Comfort working in a fast-moving startup environment where you own both the strategy and the execution, and where the system needs to evolve continuously.
• Excellent ability to communicate and influence across functions, including educating and advocating for design systems with teams that haven't worked with one before.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with modern frontend technologies, component-based development, Storybook, and design token infrastructure.
• Experience with AI-assisted design, code generation, or agent-driven workflows, particularly in exploring how AI transforms the way products are designed and built.
• Background in design engineering or highly technical product environments where the line between design and development is intentionally blurred.
• Experience building design systems in high-growth startup environments where the system had to scale alongside rapid product expansion.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term vision and roadmap for Imprint's design system, balancing immediate product needs with long-term platform investments.
• Partner deeply with Product Design, Engineering, Product Management, and AI teams to ensure system components are scalable, maintainable, production-ready, and aligned to shared priorities.
• Establish governance, contribution models, and decision-making frameworks that give product teams a shared source of truth and let them move faster without sacrificing quality or consistency.
• Evolve the design system beyond traditional Figma libraries and Storybook documentation toward machine-readable, AI-consumable foundations that connect design tooling, code generation, and AI-assisted development.
• Mentor a small team of design systems designers and partner with developers, raising the bar on systems thinking, prioritization, and ownership across the group.
• Stay hands-on by contributing directly to component architecture, documentation, patterns, and guidelines, and by leading complex initiatives from strategy through execution.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and equity packages
• Leading configured work computers of your choice
• Flexible paid time off
• Fully covered, high-quality healthcare, including fully covered dependent coverage
• Additional health coverage includes access to One Medical and the option to enroll in an FSA
• 20 weeks of paid parental leave for the primary caregiver and 8 weeks for all new parents
• Access to industry-leading technology across all of our business units, stemming from our philosophy that we should invest in resources for our team that foster innovation, optimization, and productivity

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed