Senior Manager, Design Systems

KFC•Plano, TX

10d•$160,000 - $180,000

About The Position

We’re looking for a systems-minded design leader who can translate vision into scalable infrastructure. As Senior Manager of Design Systems , you’ll evolve Yum!’s design system, from a single-brand library into the foundation for multi-brand, operator, and guest-facing experiences across Byte’s ecosystem. You’ll bridge the gap between design craft and technical execution —ensuring every designer and developer can design, build, and ship faster with consistency, accessibility, and quality. This is a pivotal role for someone who can think strategically, work technically, and lead collaboratively in a high-change, multi-brand environment.

Requirements

10–12+ years of experience in Product or UX Design, with 5+ years leading or contributing to large-scale design systems .
Proven record of building or evolving systems in enterprise, multi-product, or multi-brand environments .
Strong design foundation in UX/UI craft—able to guide component design decisions that balance usability, brand, and scalability.
Deep technical fluency in Figma architecture, tokens, component APIs, accessibility, and front-end frameworks (e.g., React, Storybook, CSS/JS tokens).
Experience leading cross-functional teams and partnering closely with engineers on design-to-code workflow integration.
Demonstrated success introducing governance models, release cadences, and documentation that scale with product velocity.
Ability to lead through ambiguity and influence without authority—using clarity, communication, and structure to align teams.
Comfortable operating in complex, distributed tool environments (multiple JIRA instances, cross-team intake).
Excellent communicator—capable of framing design systems work in terms of business impact, velocity, and technical quality.