Senior Illustrator, Design Foundations & AI Transformation

Lyft•San Francisco, NY

13d•Hybrid

About The Position

Lyft is seeking a Senior Illustrator to join the Design Foundations team, which is the infrastructure layer of Lyft's design organization. Illustration is a key component of Lyft's user experience, appearing across product surfaces, marketing, and brand. This role will manage the illustration system, collaborate with design, engineering, and marketing teams, and lead illustration efforts during a period of brand migration and capability expansion. The position reports to the Design Systems Manager and involves working with a contract illustrator, a dedicated DPM, and other design systems practitioners.

Requirements

4+ years of professional illustration experience, ideally in a product or brand context.
Strong Figma skills; ability to work natively in Figma.
Demonstrated experience building or maintaining an illustration system, component library, or visual language at scale.
Comfort working directly with engineering, understanding asset handoff from Figma to code.
Clear communicator: ability to run stakeholder reviews, provide feedback to contractors, and write clear briefs.
Ability to manage a varied workload including migration, new requests, and system maintenance.

Nice To Haves

Motion or animation experience, or a strong desire to develop these skills (After Effects, Lottie, or equivalent).
Familiarity with design systems or similar component-based systems.

Responsibilities

Execute illustration work across product surfaces (Rider, Driver, Marketing) with a high craft standard and deep understanding of the system and style.
Lead ongoing brand migration work, updating existing illustrations to the new style across multiple product verticals.
Own and maintain Lyft's illustration libraries in Figma, including organization, naming, publishing, and code handoff via LPL.
Develop motion design capabilities for illustrated assets, defining how Lyft's visual identity moves.
Manage the illustration intake process, including triaging requests, running office hours, and setting priorities with the DPM and manager.
Partner with the contract illustrator on assignments, ensuring clear packaging of work, reviewing output, and maintaining quality and consistency.
Collaborate with engineers to ship illustrations through LPL, managing SVGs to code, reviewing PRs, and publishing library updates.
Work with Marketing, Brand, and Content teams to extend the illustration system beyond product surfaces.
Contribute to documentation, onboarding materials, and illustration guidelines to ensure the system is understood by all users.

Benefits

Great medical, dental, and vision insurance options with additional programs.
Mental health benefits.
Family building benefits.
Child care and pet benefits.
401(k) plan with company match.
Discretionary paid time off for salaried team members.
15 days paid time off for hourly team members.
18 weeks of paid parental leave (biological, adoptive, and foster parents eligible).
Subsidized commuter benefits.
Monthly Lyft credits and complimentary Lyft Pink membership.