Design Lead & Design System Architect (Remote - USA)

Summit K12; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Summit K12 invites a Design Lead to own user experience for a product area and co-steward our shared design system while staying hands-on in Figma daily. This player-coach role partners with Product Managers to bridge design and product teams, delivering cohesive, high-quality outcomes.

We move fast, validate with educator insights, leverage AI tools to multiply output, and emphasize craft and judgment over title. You will help shape discovery and drive design across multiple teams.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in product/UX design, including owning a design system.
• Experience leading or mentoring designers while staying hands-on.
• Fluency in Figma and comfort managing design work in Jira.
• Active use of AI tools in your design workflow.
• Strong grounding in user-centered design, interaction design, and Universal Design for Learning.
• Experience with WCAG accessibility standards, including interpreting ACRs and driving remediation.
• A track record of building design cohesion through cross-functional partnership — influence earned, not imposed.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment: shipping without waiting for perfect data, with limited resources and tight timelines.

Responsibilities

• Maintain and evolve the Summit K12 design system — components, patterns, typography, color, accessibility standards, and interaction behaviors
• Keep the system documented, versioned, and genuinely used, so teams move faster with it than without it
• Partner with Engineering to ensure components are technically feasible and consistently implemented
• Drive adoption — you and your fellow Design Leads share accountability for the system actually being used across teams, reducing UX fragmentation through enablement and reusable patterns rather than policing
• Decide, jointly with your fellow Design Leads, what enters the system and when projects in your area can deviate from it, escalating consequential additions, cross-product deviations, and any calls the leads can't align on.
• Act as a design consultant and force multiplier to Product Managers — in a world where a PM can spin up an AI prototype in an afternoon, you're the one who makes it shippable: coherent, accessible, and on-system
• Engage early in discovery to shape solutions, not just review them at the end
• Make the case for design through outcomes — demonstrate how strong UX reduces rework, support burden, and churn
• Be the Design Lead your teams trust for day-to-day design calls
• Spend real time in Figma — this is a shipping role, not a pure oversight role
• Translate platform experience strategy into concrete, consistent navigation, workflows, and interaction patterns across all user types
• Leverage AI tools (e.g., Claude, v0, Figma AI) to accelerate design and development workflows
• Integrate Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles into the design system so interaction patterns work for the full range of learner abilities
• Use lightweight validation — heuristic reviews, quick user feedback loops, analytics, and support signals — in place of heavyweight research studies
• Know when a decision needs evidence and when experienced judgment is enoughAdvocate for accessibility, clarity, and simplicity in every experience
• Set clear expectations for quality, ownership, and accountability
• Run lean design workflows in Figma and Jira that support fast iteration and predictable delivery
• Foster a culture of user empathy, experimentation, and low-ego collaboration
• Lead, mentor and develop the designers you work with

Skills

UX design

Mentoring

User-centered design

UDL

WCAG accessibility

Design systems

Cross-functional design

Fast-paced environment

AI tools

EdTech experience

Tools

Figma

Jira

AI tools

Job description

Summit K12 invites a Design Lead to own user experience for a product area and co-steward our shared design system while staying hands-on in Figma daily. This player-coach role partners with Product Managers to bridge design and product teams, delivering cohesive, high-quality outcomes.

We move fast, validate with educator insights, leverage AI tools to multiply output, and emphasize craft and judgment over title. You will help shape discovery and drive design across multiple teams.