Design Systems Lead

Imprint

Design Systems Lead shaping product experiences in an AI-native environment at Imprint. Focused on strategy, team mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration to enable scalable design systems.

Posted 6/16/2026full-timeNew York City • New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $190,000 - $210,000 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own the Design System Strategy
Define and drive the long-term vision for Imprint's design system
Create and maintain a roadmap that balances immediate product needs with long-term platform investments
Establish governance, contribution models, and decision-making frameworks
Ensure the system evolves in response to both business needs and emerging technologies
Mentor a small team of design systems designers and partner with developers
Raise the bar on decision-making, prioritization, and systems thinking across the team
Create clear ownership and accountability structures that increase efficiency
Define success and report on progress, as well as any shifts on strategy
Advocate for and educate on design systems across the org
Partner deeply with Product Design to understand customer and business needs
Collaborate closely with Engineering to ensure system components are scalable, maintainable, and production-ready
Align design and engineering roadmaps around shared priorities
Serve as the primary point of contact for design system strategy and adoption
Help define how AI transforms the way products are designed and built
Explore new workflows that connect design systems, design tooling, code generation, and AI-assisted development
Evolve our system beyond traditional Figma libraries and Storybook documentation toward machine-readable, AI-consumable foundations
Evaluate emerging technologies and identify opportunities to increase leverage across the product development lifecycle
Contribute directly to design system work as needed
Review and improve component architecture, documentation, patterns, and guidelines

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years of product design experience, including significant design systems ownership
Experience leading or managing design systems teams
Demonstrated success building and scaling systems used across multiple product teams
Strong product judgment and ability to prioritize high-impact work
Deep understanding of design systems, component architecture, tokens, accessibility, and design-to-development workflows
Experience partnering closely with frontend engineers and engineering leadership
Excellent communication skills and ability to influence across functions

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive compensation and equity packages
Leading configured work computers of your choice
Flexible paid time off
Fully covered, high-quality healthcare, including fully covered dependent coverage
Additional health coverage includes access to One Medical and the option to enroll in an FSA
20 weeks of paid parental leave for the primary caregiver and 8 weeks for all new parents
Access to industry-leading technology across all of our business units, stemming from our philosophy that we should invest in resources for our team that foster innovation, optimization, and productivity

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

design systemscomponent architecturetokensaccessibilitydesign-to-development workflowsAI-assisted developmentFigmaStorybookroadmap creationgovernance models

Soft Skills

mentoringdecision-makingprioritizationsystems thinkingcommunicationinfluencingcollaborationaccountabilityproduct judgmentadvocacy