Product Design Manager, Design Systems

Responsibilities

Strategy & Vision

• Set the strategy and roadmap for Lyft Product Language (LPL) across product, marketing, and brand surfaces, in partnership with the Director of Design Foundations, engineering leadership, and the Design Systems team.
• Lead the AI transformation of the system by integrating AI into LPL tooling, adoption workflows, and designers’ day-to-day experience.
• Represent Design Systems in reviews and senior leadership forums.

People & Craft

• Manage and develop a team of design systems designers and illustrators working across iOS, Android, web, and brand.
• Hold the quality bar for system-wide design, including cross-platform coherence, accessibility (WCAG), road safety, localization, and brand consistency.
• Coach the team on tradeoffs between flexibility, coherence, usability, and efficiency.

Execution & Partnership

• Partner with the Design Systems DPM and engineering managers to maintain system health, sequence work, and unblock teams.
• Own the LPL component contribution and review process end-to-end, from intake through release.
• Communicate system decisions, adoption expectations, and quality standards upward and across product, engineering, and marketing.

Requirements

• 7+ years in product or brand design, including 2+ years managing designers.
• Direct experience leading a design system at scale, including components, patterns, guidelines, and shipped-to-code workflows.
• Fluency across mobile and web platforms, with a working understanding of how systems are consumed by engineers.
• Experience managing a design systems team.
• Strong track record of partnering with engineering on architecture, releases, and quality.
• Experience setting and defending craft standards across cross-functional stakeholders.
• Excellent written communication and comfort operating in an async-heavy environment with documented decisions.
• Comfort driving disagree-and-commit decisions and making tradeoffs amid ambiguity.

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with AI-assisted design tooling, including Figma MCP, generative workflows, and agentic prototyping.

Compensation & Benefits

• Expected base pay range in the Toronto area: CAD $172,000–$215,000, excluding potential equity, bonus, and benefits.
• Extended health and dental coverage, life insurance, and disability benefits.
• Mental health benefits.
• Family building benefits.
• Child care and pet benefits.
• Lyft-funded Health Care Savings Account.
• RRSP plan with company match.
• Flexible paid time off for salaried team members; hourly team members receive 15 days paid time off, plus an additional day for each year of service.
• 18 weeks of paid parental leave for biological, adoptive, and foster parents, designed as a top-up to provincial programs.
• Subsidized commuter benefits and Lyft ride credits.
• Hybrid schedule requiring at least three days per week in the office, including Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays; hybrid roles may work from anywhere for up to four weeks per year.