Design Systems Lead
Lead the creation and ownership of Perplexity's design system as a 50/50 design-engineer. Bootstrap semantic token systems and component libraries across mobile, web, and React; own the GitHub repo, documentation, governance, and adoption while maintaining high visual and technical standards.
About the job
What you'll do
- Bootstrap and own an intuitive semantic token system that works across multiple platforms and frameworks
- Own the design system repo on GitHub: the source of truth for components, tokens, and standards, including versioning, release management, and a clear changelog
- Set and uphold a high bar for visual design quality across every surface the system touches
- Navigate the nuanced differences between mobile, web, and React UI best practices, and encode them into the system
- Define and run the contribution model and governance: review and shepherd inbound contributions from product feature teams, keeping quality and consistency high as the system grows
- Keep design and engineering in sync, bridging Figma and code so the system stays coherent end-to-end
- Own clear, first-class documentation so teams can adopt components and tokens on their own, and drive adoption across the org through onboarding, office hours, and hands-on support
- Bake in accessibility (WCAG) and theming (including dark mode) as defaults, not afterthoughts
- Maintain a system roadmap, balancing net-new work, migrations, and deprecations against feature-team needs
- Bring new AI tooling into the design systems workflow and help shape how we build systems in an AI-native way
- Operate with autonomy in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment
What we're looking for
- Extensive experience owning design systems at large organizations
- A true 50/50 design-engineer, equally credible in visual craft and in code
- An impeccable eye for visual design
- Deep understanding of the nuanced differences between mobile, web, and React UI best practices
- Strong product sensibilities to help evaluate and integrate contributions from various product feature teams
- Fluency in Figma, but primarily living in GitHub where you own the repo
- Experience designing and maintaining semantic design tokens and scalable component APIs
- A track record of driving adoption through excellent documentation and cross-functional partnership
- Working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG) and how to build them into a system
- Readiness to work with new AI tooling and genuine comfort with ambiguity
Nice to have
- Experience building a semantic token system from scratch across multiple platforms
- A track record scaling a design system through a period of fast org growth
- Experience defining contribution models and governance for multi-team design systems
- Familiarity with component tooling and documentation platforms (e.g., Storybook)
- Experience mentoring designers and engineers and growing a design systems practice
Skills
Design Systems, Semantic Tokens, Figma, GitHub, React, Wcag, Storybook, Accessibility, Dark Mode, Component Apis
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