Ux Designer - Design Systems

Canonical; United Kingdom; Remote; GBP 45,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Personal learning and development USD

Annual compensation review

Maternity and paternity leave

Team Member Assistance Program & Well-

Opportunity to travel to new locations

Priority Pass and travel upgrades

Job summary

Canonical is seeking a UX designer for the Design System Team. You will shape and scale the design system, collaborating with designers, engineers, and stakeholders to translate user needs into reusable components and guidelines.

The role emphasizes design system governance, accessibility, and performance, with the opportunity to travel up to 4 times a year for internal events. Remotely based in the EMEA region.

Qualifications

• Experience in UX/product design with a focus on design systems in complex environments.
• Portfolio showing design systems expertise: components, docs, and complex envs.
• Strong educational achievements in design or related behavioral science.
• Expertise in Figma, Storybook and design token workflows.
• Experience collaborating with engineers and bridging design and code.
• Proven ability to document design decisions clearly.

Responsibilities

• Build and evolve Canonical’s design system for adoption and scalability.
• Collaborate with designers, engineers, and stakeholders to translate needs into components and guidelines.
• Champion design system practices and provide documentation and support for teams.
• Design and document UI components, tokens and interaction patterns.
• Ensure timely delivery of the design system roadmap.
• Promote accessibility, performance, and coherence across products.

Skills

Design systems

Figma

Storybook

Documentation

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Design degree

Tools

Figma

Storybook

Job description

Canonical is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives such as public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation and IoT. Our customers include the world's leading public cloud and silicon providers, and industry leaders in many sectors. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with + colleagues in 75+ countries and very few office based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person, in interesting locations around the world, to align on strategy and execution.

The company is founder led, profitable and growing.

We are hiring a UX designer for our Design System Team.

You will play a key role making open source software available to the world. Our Design function ensures the experience of the software and infrastructure we build is true to our intentions, and delivers the tools our community and customers need. The Design System UX designer makes that possible by defining, evolving and advocating for a consistent use of design system that scales across our products.

This role sits in the design system team reporting to Design Systems Management

Location: This role will be based remotely in the EMEA region.

The role entails

• Building and evolving Canonical’s design system, ensuring measurable adoption, consistency, scalability and accessibility across our products
• Collaborating with designers, engineers and stakeholders to translate user needs and brand principles into reusable components, patterns and guidelines
• Championing design system best practices, advocating for cohesive user experience and design, providing documentation and support for cross-functional teams
• Designing and documenting UI components, design tokens and interaction patterns
• Ensuring timely and efficient delivery of the roadmap
• Enabling alignment on design system usage and governance across teams
• Advocating for accessibility, performance, and scalability in design system decisions and iterating based on data and technological advancements
• Staying ahead of industry trends, ensuring innovation and balancing it with system coherence and performance

What we are looking for in you

• Relevant experience in UX/product design, with a strong focus on design systems in complex environments
• A portfolio demonstrating strong expertise in design systems, including component libraries, documentation and handling complex environments
• Exceptional educational achievements in design or related behavioral science discipline
• Expertise in Figma, Storybook and design token workflows
• Experience of collaborating with engineers and bridging design and code
• Proven ability to apply design process and clearly communicate and document design decisions
• Excellent attention to detail and systemic approach to solving complex design challenges
• Commitment to transparent project delivery and owning team deadlines
• A passion for balancing consistency and innovation
• Willingness to travel up to 4 times a year for internal events

What we offer colleagues

We consider geographical location, experience, and performance in shaping compensation worldwide. We revisit compensation annually (and more often for graduates and associates) to ensure we recognize outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus or commission. We provide all team members with additional benefits which reflect our values and ideals. We balance our programs to meet local needs and ensure fairness globally.

• Distributed work environment with twice-yearly team sprints in person
• Personal learning and development budget of USD 2, per year
• Annual compensation review
• Recognition rewards
• Annual holiday leave
• Maternity and paternity leave
• Team Member Assistance Program & Wellness Platform
• Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues
• Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long-haul company events