Principal Product Designer, Design Systems

Kin Insurance

5d•$190,000 - $210,000•Remote

About The Position

Kin's long-term vision is to become the most trusted platform for homeownership -- a connected ecosystem of insurance, financing, home intelligence, and services that feels like one product, not a collection of handoffs. Every new thing we build has to feel like Kin. The Principal Product Designer role exists to make that possible. In the past six months, Kin has launched auto insurance, flood insurance, property tax protests, home financing, and more. Every one of those products has to feel cohesive. Right now, our design system is a collection of disconnected branches that limits what the team can build and consumes hours that should go toward craft and personality. This role exists to solve that. You'll own the token layer, establish Figma-to-code parity, define the contribution model, and make the system the easiest path to a consistent experience — across everything we build next. This is a principal-level IC role. You'll work across a federated, domain-based org and drive adoption through influence. The work you do here has direct implications for how Kin scales — and as AI makes it cheap to ship something that just works, the way our products feel to use is increasingly the thing that sets us apart.

Requirements

A track record of taking a design system from audit through architecture to adoption — you treat the system as a product, not a deliverable.
Significant visual and product design experience, commonly 7+ years, with a meaningful stretch focused specifically on design systems work.
Deep fluency in token architecture (primitive / semantic / component) and mastery of Figma as a systems tool — variables, libraries, and modes.
Proven ability to leverage AI tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) to accelerate manual tasks, automate documentation, and speed up the design-to-code feedback loop.
The ability to influence without authority — you set direction and bring partners along across a federated org without relying on positional power.
Comfort operating in ambiguity and 0-to-1 spaces, where the structure doesn't exist yet and you're the one building it.

Nice To Haves

Experience in insurance, fintech, or other complex, regulated, high-consideration product domains.
Familiarity with the design-to-code toolchain — Storybook/Chromatic, a token transformer like Style Dictionary, and how tokens land in a real front-end stack (Angular, Rails, etc.).
Comfort reading or contributing to component code.

Responsibilities

Using AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor), audit existing component libraries and live product experiences — mapping gaps, drift, and inconsistencies — to generate a data-backed plan to unify and streamline the system.
Own and drive Kin's token architecture across color, typography, spacing, and motion, structured as primitive, semantic, and component tokens, as the single source of truth for design and code.
Experience designing token systems that scale across different contexts -- internal tools, customer-facing apps, or multi-brand surfaces -- with an architecture that can flex without fragmenting.
Establish and maintain Figma-to-code parity, partnering with engineering on the pipeline from design tokens to implemented, documented components.
Introduce new components and patterns thoughtfully as Kin moves into new product domains, ensuring the system grows with intention rather than sprawl.
Define the contribution model and governance — versioning, changelogs, intake, and quality bars — and implement automated guardrails that let teams extend the system without fragmentation.
Build the single source of truth that replaces disparate tools as the canonical reference for Kin's design patterns.
Advocate for accessibility in components so teams inherit it by default, using automated testing and AI-assisted audits to proactively identify compliance gaps.
Partner across Product, Engineering, and embedded domain designers to make the system the easiest path to a cohesive, on-brand experience across every surface.

Benefits

Competitive salary and company equity through Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), granted as part of our standard compensation package and based on role and level
This role is eligible to earn additional compensation annually through participation in our Kin Leadership Incentive Plan
401(k) with company match up to 4% of eligible earnings
Multiple medical plan options, plus dental and vision coverage
Company-funded HSA contributions (based on medical plan selection)
Company-paid life insurance and short-term disability
Employee referral bonuses
A variety of supplemental benefit options, including long-term disability, critical illness, accident, legal, and pet insurance
Access to mental health support and confidential counseling resources
Flexible PTO for exempt employees (most employees take 15–20 days per year), plus 8 company-observed holidays
Paid parental leave, including up to 14 weeks at 100% pay for birthing parents and 8 weeks at 100% pay for non-birthing parents
Career mobility and internal growth opportunities across the organization
Professional development budgets for certifications, conferences, and learning available, subject to management approval