Design Systems Lead

Details

We're seeking a Design Systems Lead with extensive experience owning design systems at large organizations. You'll bootstrap an intuitive semantic token system that supports design and product teams across multiple platforms and frameworks—the foundation that keeps Perplexity's product coherent as it scales.

This is a true 50/50 design-engineer role. You'll live primarily in GitHub, where you own the system's repository, while staying fluent in Figma so design and engineering never drift apart. You'll set the bar for visual quality and the technical standards that let feature teams move fast without fragmenting the experience.

You'll work at the intersection of design and engineering, partnering with product feature teams across mobile, web, and React surfaces.

Responsibilities

• Bootstrap and own an intuitive semantic token system that works across multiple platforms and frameworks.
• Own the design system repository on GitHub as 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, reviewing and shepherding inbound contributions from product feature teams while maintaining quality and consistency.
• Keep design and engineering in sync by bridging Figma and code so the system remains coherent end-to-end.
• Own clear, first-class documentation so teams can adopt components and tokens independently, and drive adoption through onboarding, office hours, and hands-on support.
• Build accessibility, including WCAG standards, and theming, including dark mode, into the system by default.
• Maintain a system roadmap that balances new work, migrations, and deprecations against feature-team needs.
• Bring new AI tooling into the design systems workflow and help shape how systems are built in an AI-native way.
• Operate autonomously in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.

Requirements

• Extensive experience owning design systems at large organizations.
• Experience as a 50/50 design-engineer, with credibility in both visual craft and code.
• An impeccable eye for visual design.
• Deep understanding of the differences between mobile, web, and React UI best practices.
• Strong product sensibilities for evaluating and integrating contributions from product feature teams.
• Fluency in Figma, with primary ownership of the repository in GitHub.
• 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, including WCAG, and how to build them into a system.
• Readiness to work with new AI tooling and comfort with ambiguity.

Nice to Have

• Experience building a semantic token system from scratch across multiple platforms.
• A track record of scaling a design system during a period of rapid organizational growth.
• Experience defining contribution models and governance for multi-team design systems.
• Familiarity with component tooling and documentation platforms such as Storybook.
• Experience mentoring designers and engineers and growing a design systems practice.

Benefits

Full-time U.S. employees receive a comprehensive benefits program including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter and dependent care accounts, and more. Full-time employees outside the U.S. receive a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region of residence. International salaries are set based on the local market. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including experience and expertise, and may vary from the listed U.S. salary range.