Instacart

Senior Product Designer II – Design Systems

Instacart

full-time

Posted on:

Location Type: Remote

Location: California • Colorado • United States

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Salary

💰 $169,000 - $214,000 per year

Job Level

Senior

About the role

  • Drive the design system roadmap: prioritize based on product needs, system health, and adoption friction.
  • Demonstrated ability to set a clear, forward‑looking vision for design system evolution and drive stakeholder alignment.
  • Define and evolve component and pattern UX: anatomy, interaction states, responsive behavior, motion, and accessibility defaults.
  • Lead token strategy (primitive + semantic): semantics, theming, density, and scalable extensibility across products.
  • Establish and maintain system governance: contribution standards, quality bar, review process, versioning, deprecations, and migration plans.
  • Partner with design technologists, engineers and product design teams to ensure design-to-code fidelity, consistent component APIs, and minimal system drift.
  • Ensure high-quality standards of implementation-aware specs (not just visuals): edge cases, constraints, usage guidance, and acceptance criteria.
  • Collaborate with Design Technologists to translate system guidance into in-tool guardrails (linting, templates, plugin experiences).
  • Help define the system’s structured knowledge model (rules, constraints, do/don’t, examples) so it can power automation and AI-assisted support.
  • Identify design enablement workflow opportunities and prioritize enablement opportunities that reduce rework and raise consistency.
  • Measure adoption and impact, identify workflow friction, and execute enablement programs that reduce rework, raise consistency, and accelerate safe system evolution.

Requirements

  • 6+ years in product design (or equivalent) with proven experience shipping and maintaining a design system used by multiple teams.
  • Strong design fundamentals: interaction design, visual systems, hierarchy, and responsive patterns.
  • Design systems mastery: components, patterns, tokens, governance, adoption, systems-thinking, documentation, and cross-platform consistency.
  • Technical fluency: able to collaborate in component-based workflows (e.g., Storybook or equivalent) and understand how implementation constraints shape UX.
  • Strong accessibility competency applied to systems (WCAG compliance, etc).
  • Demonstrated use of AI/automation to improve speed and quality (not just ideation, real workflow impact).
  • Experience with token pipelines (CSS variables, semantic token architectures, token tooling).
  • Experience driving adoption through metrics, migrations, and enablement programs.
  • Bachelor’s degree in Design, HCI, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Benefits
  • Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work.
  • This role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants.
  • Learn more about our benefits offerings here.
Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools
interaction designvisual systemsresponsive patternsdesign systems masterycomponentspatternstokensgovernanceWCAG compliancetoken pipelines
Soft Skills
stakeholder alignmentcollaborationmeasuring adoptionworkflow optimizationdesign enablement
Certifications
Bachelor’s degree in DesignBachelor’s degree in HCI