Staff Product Designer, Design Systems

What you’ll do

• Lead the strategy, evolution, and execution of Alpaca, ensuring it scales with the needs of a rapidly growing, increasingly AI-driven product organization.
• Extend the design system to support AI and agent product patterns, including agent chat and canvas experiences and components that need to adapt based on runtime or model context.
• Partner with product designers and engineers across every product team to define, document, and ship new components, patterns, and guidelines.
• Establish and evolve governance models, contribution frameworks, and quality standards that let every designer at Vanta build consistently, including for AI-native surfaces that don't fit traditional static component thinking.
• Drive design system adoption through education, tooling, and proactive partnership, especially with teams building agentic features who may be new to systems thinking.
• Represent Design Systems and AI Patterns work in cross-functional forums, translating system-level tradeoffs for engineering and product leadership.
• Mentor other designers, including senior designers, on systems thinking, component architecture, and how to design well within (and push against) a shared system.
• Advocate for accessibility and inclusive design as a foundational requirement across all components, patterns, and documentation.

How to be successful in this role

• 7+ years of experience as a product designer, with significant depth in design systems, ideally within complex B2B SaaS.
• Deep expertise building and evolving scalable design systems, including component architecture, design tokens, and pattern libraries, plus a strong point of view on how those foundations need to change for AI and agentic product surfaces.
• Strong visual design foundation, with mastery of typography, color theory, spacing, interaction design, and accessibility principles. This role requires high craft, not just governance.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity where org boundaries (e.g., between Design Systems and AI/Agent product work) aren't fully settled, and the judgment to help shape that structure rather than wait for it.
• Experience collaborating closely with front-end engineers, with enough fluency in front-end code to reason credibly about design-to-code fidelity and, ideally, contribute directly.
• Expert-level proficiency in Figma, including variants, auto-layout, and design tokens, with experience publishing and managing shared libraries at scale.
• Strong soft skills: the ability to influence without direct authority, build alignment across designers, engineers, and leadership who may have competing priorities, and communicate system-level tradeoffs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• A track record of mentoring other designers and raising the craft and systems literacy of the people around you.
• Open to using AI to amplify their skills and strengthen their work - demonstrating curiosity, a willingness to learn, and sound judgment in applying AI responsibly to improve efficiency and impact.

What you can expect as a Vanta’n

• Industry-competitive salary and equity.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, with 100% of employee-only benefit premiums covered for most medical plans.
• 16 weeks paid Parental Leave for all new parents.
• Health & wellness stipend.
• Remote workspace, internet, and cellphone stipend.
• Commuter benefits for team members who report to the SF and NYC office.
• Family planning benefits.
• Matching 401(k) contribution with immediate vesting.
• Flexible PTO policy, plus 80 hours of Sick Time.
• 11 company-paid holidays.
• Virtual team building activities, lunch and learns, and other company-wide events!