Design Systems Lead

DISCOVERED; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 350,000 - 650,000; Full time

Job summary

DISCOVERED in Abu Dhabi is hiring a Design Systems Lead to take full ownership of the design system powering a growing family of AI products. This is a hands-on role for someone who has built one before and can keep it steady as the range of products expands.

You will create and run a single system with foundations, tokens, theming and component APIs that can vary per brand while feeling cohesive across the portfolio.

Qualifications

• Must have built and led a design system serving multiple product teams.
• Tokens, theming and component APIs are second nature, both in code and in design tooling.
• Experience integrating a design system with AI coding tools (e.g., Claude).

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve a single design system across the product family.
• Define foundations, tokens and theming; set boundaries and defend them as the portfolio grows.
• Ensure the system remains coherent and usable even when accessed by AI coding agents.

Skills

Design system leadership

Tokens and theming

AI tool integration

Cross-team leadership

Figma proficiency

Tools

Figma

Claude integration

Job description

We are hiring a Design Systems Lead to take full ownership of the design system that powers a growing family of AI products in Abu Dhabi. This is a hands on role for someone who has built one before and can keep it steady as the range of products keeps expanding.

Discover the Company

You will join an ambitious organisation in Abu Dhabi that is shipping AI products across a broad portfolio. A few of those products live under one shared identity and are meant to feel connected. Others stand on their own, with a distinct look and their own audience. The trouble today is that the current system has fallen behind and nobody is keeping it alive, so designers have each spun up their own approach and the products no longer feel like they belong together. They want a single owner to pull it all back under one roof.

Discover the Role

You will create and run one design system that sits beneath every product. Picture a common set of foundations, with theming and tokens layered over the top, so a single component can wear a different corner radius and colour per brand while the wider portfolio still feels coherent. You get to draw the boundaries, deciding what is locked, what each team is free to adjust, and what simply should not exist, then defending those calls as the lineup grows. It also has to run smoothly when you are nowhere near it, so that a person or an AI coding agent tapping into it produces work that meets the bar on its own.

Discover the Requirements

• You have built and led a design system that served several product teams, not simply pitched in on one.
• Tokens, theming and component APIs are second nature to you, and you are just as at home with how the system behaves in code as you are inside Figma.
• You have plugged a design system into AI coding tools like Claude, letting engineers build from it directly rather than checking with design on every call.
• You bring genuine taste and can steer visual direction, not only the structure behind it.
• You can define a bar and keep everyone to it, and you are happy inheriting something half finished and working out what to keep, fix or add.

Industry background is beside the point here. This comes down to the craft and thinking behind a design system that holds up over time, and it is pitched at a senior level based on what you have delivered rather than time served. If building and owning a design system from the ground up sounds like your kind of challenge, and you want the space to shape how it works, let's talk.