Lead Ai Design System Designer
About The Position
As Lead AI Design Systems Designer on the Global Design System team at Manulife, you will play a key role in the Global Design System team responsible for scaling and evolving GEM, Manulife's enterprise-wide design system, which serves multiple business units across Canada, Asia, and the US. GEM enables consistency, efficiency, accessibility, and innovation across Manulife's public, secure, and mobile digital experiences. You will partner closely with design, engineering, and product teams across regions to advance the AI enablement layer that makes GEM the default system for every AI-assisted design and development workflow. This role requires deep expertise in enterprise design systems, AI tooling integration, design tokens, machine-readable documentation, and the technical and organizational complexities of embedding a design system into the fabric of a global enterprise. You will align with the GDS Core team and the broader Digital Storefront program, helping to shape, establish, and continuously improve the governance and ways of working that guide GEM. The ideal candidate has successfully worked on enterprise-wide design systems and understands how to make those systems machine-readable, governable, and adoptable at scale through emerging AI tooling. AI tooling is now the fastest-growing channel for design system adoption. When a designer prompts Figma's agent or a developer prompts a coding assistant, the design system they receive by default is the one that wins.
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience building and scaling design systems in complex, multi-product, or multi-brand enterprise environments, preferably within financial services, insurance, or other regulated industries.
- Advanced Figma architecture expertise: variables, complex component structures, design tokens (including Tokens Studio), and the Figma API. Candidates must understand how to structure Figma files not just for designers, but for programmatic extraction by AI agents and engineering pipelines.
- Applied AI experience: LLMs, MCP server integration, and agentic coding environments such as Claude Code or Cursor. Hands-on experience with Figma MCP, Code Connect, DTCG tokens, and Style Dictionary.
- Experience with JSON schema design, component metadata architecture, and machine-readable documentation formats.
- Prior work making design system artifacts consumable by AI systems and engineering pipelines is a significant advantage.
- Proven track record of working on enterprise-wide design systems within large, global organizations, balancing standardization with regional and local adaptation.
- Comfort bridging design and code: HTML/CSS, design token pipelines, and version control (Git).
- Deep working knowledge of WCAG 2.2 and AODA, with experience embedding accessibility into system foundations rather than auditing it after the fact.
- Experience developing design principles and heuristics structured for consumption by AI systems, or direct familiarity with Figma's AI Models practice and related agentic design tooling.
- Experience designing conversational or agent-based experiences, or strong instincts for how people ask systems questions.
- Experience working in complex matrixed organizations with multiple business units and partners across geographies and time zones.
- Exceptional stakeholder management and influence skills — able to align design, engineering, product, and platform teams with differing priorities across regions.
Nice To Haves
- Experience establishing shared governance models with frontend engineering and delivering design systems through enterprise CMS platforms such as AEM is a significant advantage.
- Familiarity with Agile, Lean UX, and enterprise digital delivery models.
Responsibilities
- Scaling and evolving GEM, Manulife's enterprise-wide design system.
- Advancing the AI enablement layer that makes GEM the default system for every AI-assisted design and development workflow.
- Partnering closely with design, engineering, and product teams across regions.
- Shaping, establishing, and continuously improving the governance and ways of working that guide GEM.
- Making design systems machine-readable, governable, and adoptable at scale through emerging AI tooling.
- Embedding accessibility into system foundations.
- Developing design principles and heuristics structured for consumption by AI systems.
- Designing conversational or agent-based experiences.
- Managing stakeholders and influencing design, engineering, product, and platform teams with differing priorities across regions.
Benefits
- Health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage
- Adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits
- Employee/family assistance plans
- Various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions)
- Financial education and counseling resources
- Generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days
- Full range of statutory leaves of absence
- Opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance.
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
