Design Systems Manager

Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd; London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company in the retail sector seeks a Design Systems Manager to lead a talented team in delivering a user-centric design system across multiple brands. This role involves managing and coaching designers, advocating for design principles, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance customer experiences. The company offers a flexible working culture, competitive salary, and a range of benefits, including discounts, healthcare, and a performance-related bonus.

Benefits

Colleague discount

Pensions scheme

Life cover

Performance-related bonus

Annual holiday allowance

Health cash plans

Employee Assistance Programme

Private healthcare

Qualifications

• Experience managing designers and design systems.
• Strong understanding of inclusive design frameworks.
• Proven examples of design systems work in portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of designers for the design system.
• Engage stakeholders to shape design strategy.
• Conduct user testing and research for validation.

Skills

Creativity

Problem Solving

Communication

Collaboration

Education

Design System Manager experience

Tools

Figma

React

Tailwind

Job description

Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: Holborn Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1N 2HT
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 20 May 2025
Requisition ID: 305237

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Think about the scale it takes for us to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety it involves. Then you’ll realise that ours is a modern software engineering environment because it has to be. We’ve made serious investment into a Tech Academy and into setting standards and principles. We iterate, learn, experiment and push ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to awesome opportunities in everything from AI to reusable tech.

Design Systems Manager

At Sainsbury's we believe that the customer should be at the heart of everything we do. Customer Experience's vision is to create the easiest, most enjoyable experiences that better serve our customers' ever-changing needs. We work across a range of services, products, touch points and tools to deliver distinctive, integrated, and consistent experiences for our customers and colleagues across Sainsbury's Group (which includes Sainsbury's Food, Argos, Bank, Nectar, Tu and Habitat). We drive brilliant experiences across all our brands in-store and online, operating in agile teams and squads, and working seamlessly with teams right across the business to make the most of the exceptional knowledge, insight and talent we have.

As a Design Systems Manager, you'll lead a talented team of designers to deliver and iterate our Fable design system across all of Sainsbury’s brands, working hand in hand with our Engineering colleagues to deliver this into our teams.

You will -

• Manage, coach and develop your team, unblocking challenges and setting high standards for the design of our experiences.
• Set out the vision for the design system and engage with a wide range of stakeholders to shape the design strategy.
• Be hands-on where needed, zoom in and out of problem spaces to create effective solutions.
• Be a key advocate for the Design System, educating stakeholders across Design, Product and Engineering.
• Liaise directly with the Product community to drive adoption and engagement.

Within the wider Customer Experience team, you will have the opportunity to work in a dynamic environment in a sector that is going through unprecedented digital transformation, as well as a commitment to work with you to drive your development. We offer a collaborative culture, a flexible approach to working and lots of colleague benefits.

What you need to do:

• Inspire, coach and motivate the design system team and members of the wider design community
• Lead and advocate for the design of a user centric, multi brand, multi platform design system that brings efficiency, accessibility and consistency to all experience design at Sainsbury’s
• Lead and manage stakeholders, project teams and the design community on understanding the benefits and adoption of the design system
• Work with the design systems EM to develop a strategy that puts the design system at the heart of design and dev culture
• Lead adoption of the design system at scale
• Champion the voice of the user through your work and your team, be that users of the design system or end users. Conduct user testing and research to validate designs and bring stakeholders on the journey
• Work with broader design teams to continuously evolve the design system and guidelines, making them as user-centric as possible
• Consistently embed inclusive design principles in your work. Encourage this throughout the team and wider design community
• Proactively collaborate with cross-functional teams, championing best practice design, accessibility and systems thinking in an agile environment
• Recruit a diverse and inclusive team
• Work in collaboration with the Product community to drive adoption of the Design Systems. Influencing Product managers to get Fable included in their roadmaps
• Ensuring you are balancing Design best practice and inclusivity whilst balancing commerciality and trade priorities to deliver a best-in-class design system
• Create and maintain a roadmap for the Design System and sharing this with stakeholders, and running demo sessions
  
  

What you need to know and show:

• You will bring a wealth of knowledge with you as a previous a Design System Manager, Lead or Staff Designer
• Multi-brand, multi-platform or multi-theme design system experience is highly desirable
• High level of creativity, problem solving skills
• Experience of line managing designers
• Strong people and communication skills
• Adept at collaborating with and influencing stakeholders at every level across design, product and tech.
• A thorough technical understanding of design systems as well as inclusive design frameworks
• Expert skills with Figma, particularly with components, libraries, variables and tokens
• Knowledge or experience of engineering side of design systems - React, Tailwind, design tokens, Jetpack Compose and SwiftUI beneficial.
• Knowledge or experience of service design principles beneficial
• Expert knowledge of designing with accessibility in mind and WCAG
• Methods and practices of usability research and confidence in conducting research and interpreting results
• Ability to demonstrate the behavioural competencies of this role including: initiative, flexibility, influencing, negotiating, strong communication skills, and ability to deal with ambiguity
• An outstanding portfolio with proven examples of design systems work and their adoption, showcasing your talents, skills, process and experience
• Proactive collaboration with other Experience Design Managers and Head of Experience Design on strategy
• Vouch for accessibility and systems thinking throughout the design, product and tech community.
• Proactive collaboration with project teams, the design community and senior stakeholders alike
• Ability to manage multiple, changing priorities and complex dynamics
• Experience building and managing a roadmap including knowledge of Jira tooling
• Strong awareness of key metrics and ability to demonstrate the value derived from implementation of the Design System

Directly or indirectly manager:

• A team of midweight designers

Support we will provide:

• A thriving design culture, opportunity to discuss and share work with open collaborative feedback
• Research, content design and accessibility expertise.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new - whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).