Staff/Principal Design Systems Lead

Render

1d•$218,000 - $307,000

About The Position

Render is seeking a founding design systems leader to build the foundations that help designers, engineers, and AI agents create experiences that look, feel, and work like Render. The role goes beyond maintaining a component library: it will establish a system that makes strong design judgment reproducible while leaving room for distinctive, high-quality experiences. The position begins as a hands-on design role with technical depth. In partnership with the Head of Design, the lead will set the system’s vision, make foundational decisions about the Figma library, explore what an AI-ready design system requires, and prototype, test, and ship the system in code. As the function grows, the lead will hire and develop a team to own the system. A central focus is making the system useful to both people and AI agents. This includes machine-readable documentation, exposing rules and tokens where agents can access them, designing architecture that preserves Render’s brand and accessibility standards, and evaluating generated output for quality and drift. The role will partner with engineering and product teams to shape architecture, increase adoption, improve the product’s visual and interaction quality, and adapt as models and tools evolve. The position reports to the Head of Design.

Requirements

Track record of setting direction and delivering outcomes in design systems or design engineering.
Appetite to build a function from the ground up, beginning hands-on and growing into team leadership.
Ability to create clarity in ambiguity, make decisions, give difficult feedback, and maintain momentum without lowering quality.
Exceptional visual and interaction design skills, with strong attention to detail and the ability to make complex experiences feel simple.
Deep systems thinking and experience building systems that other teams adopt, with evidence of improving their speed and the quality of shipped work.
Strong technical fluency: ability to prototype and build in code, understand front-end architecture, and work through implementation tradeoffs with engineers.
Understanding of component API design, tokens, theming, and layered or headless patterns.
Hands-on use of AI in work and a considered point of view on AI-ready design systems, including where AI helps or fails and how to improve its output.
Strong product judgment and developer empathy, with a focus on real user workflows and outcomes.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading or developing designers or design engineers.
Fluency with developers and technical products.
Experience building developer tools, cloud platforms, or infrastructure products where UX is a competitive advantage.
Hands-on experience making a design system AI-ready, such as machine-readable documentation, MCP or similar agent access, layered or headless architecture, or evaluation frameworks for AI-generated output.
Experience building developer or designer tools that became part of other teams’ daily workflow.
Experience leading a major design-system migration or company-wide change in how teams build.
Experience evolving a system across platforms or connecting product and brand experiences.
Founder or early-stage startup experience.

Responsibilities

Set the design system’s vision and direction, deciding what to preserve, evolve, simplify, or replace based on builder and customer needs.
Build the system’s foundations hands-on, including architecture, components, guidance, and quality standards.
Hire, develop, and lead the team responsible for the design system as the function grows.
Elevate Render’s visual and interaction design, including typography, hierarchy, density, motion, responsive behavior, accessibility, and non-happy-path states.
Make the design system legible to AI through machine-readable documentation, agent-accessible rules and tokens, and architecture that supports on-brand, accessible output.
Guide technical architecture with engineering across components, tokens, theming, agent discovery, and quality checks; balance flexibility, coherence, performance, and usability.
Define and measure quality, including repeatable evaluations of AI-generated output against the system’s standards.
Earn adoption by working alongside product teams, teaching through examples, and turning recurring questions and exceptions into system improvements.
Experiment as models and tools evolve, share findings, and change direction when evidence supports it.

Benefits

4 weeks of paid vacation.
14 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all parents, with a supportive return plan.
Long-term disability and life insurance.
401(k) plans.
100% employer-paid medical coverage and 99% employer-paid dental and vision coverage for the employee and a dependent.
Flexible spending accounts (FSAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs).
Monthly lifestyle stipend for wellness, mental health and therapy, hobbies, and other uses.
Monthly cell phone and internet subsidy.
Commuter benefits for Bay Area employees.
Home office stipends for remote employees.
Continuous learning benefits and related support.