Lead Design Engineer - GM Design System

GM • Austin, TX

4d

About The Position

At General Motors, we combine the passion of a startup with the influence of a global powerhouse. We pride ourselves on designing, building, and selling the world’s best vehicles and transportation solutions. Our vision of a future with zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion is bold, and our people are leading the way as we seek to transform the future of personal mobility. To achieve this vision, we need people to join us who are passionate about crafting safer, better, and more sustainable ways for people to get around. The Role We’re looking for a highly skilled Senior Design Engineer to help evolve and scale our enterprise design system. In this role, you’ll collaborate with designers, engineers, and platform teams to build accessible, performant, and reusable components that power consistent experiences across multiple products and platforms. You’ll also help define processes, tools, and standards that enable design excellence at scale.

Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree in a technical or design related field, or work experience commensurate with education.
• 9+ Years of experience working as a professional Design Engineer or Design Technologist.
• 3+ years of direct people management experience.
• Proven expertise in vanilla HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Components (not reliant on frameworks).
• Strong understanding of front-end architecture and strategies for scaling CSS in enterprise environments.
• Deep knowledge of semantic HTML, WCAG, and ARIA accessibility standards.
• Experience with progressive enhancement and performance optimization.
• Ability to write clean, maintainable, and self-documenting code.
• Proven experience building or contributing to large-scale design systems or UI libraries.

Nice To Haves

• 4+ years of experience working with React, Angular or other advanced modern JavaScript frameworks.
• Proven expertise with design tokens, Style Dictionary, or similar tools.
• Knowledge of testing frameworks (e.g., Jest, Playwright) and visual regression tools (e.g., Percy).
• Curiosity for emerging front-end techniques and a passion for continuous learning.
• Background in web design, design tooling, or collaborating heavily with design teams.
• Previous experience leading, developing, and inspiring a team.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain a scalable design system using vanilla HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Components.
• Write semantic, accessible HTML aligned with WCAG and WAI-ARIA best practices.
• Architect modular, maintainable CSS for large-scale applications.
• Build flexible, reusable components with a focus on performance, accessibility, and self-documentation.
• Ensure cross-browser and cross-device consistency for all UI components.
• Translate Figma designs into production-ready code, collaborating closely with designers.
• Contribute to design system documentation for easy adoption across teams.
• Define and enforce coding standards, best practices, and governance models for long-term scalability.
• Incorporate progressive enhancement and ensure graceful degradation when JavaScript is unavailable.
• Partner with engineering teams to integrate components into CI/CD pipelines and ensure robust testing (unit, visual regression, accessibility).
• Mentor developers on front-end architecture and design system best practices.

Benefits

• From day one, we're looking out for your well-being–at work and at home–so you can focus on realizing your ambitions. Learn how GM supports a rewarding career that rewards you personally by visiting Total Rewards resources

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level