Design Systems Lead

Pebl; Palo Alto, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible Time Off

Parental Leave

Health and Dental Insurance

Retirement Savings + Employee Incenti­

Job summary

Pebl is seeking a senior product designer to own and evolve our design system across web and mobile. You will collaborate with product and engineering to scale a token-driven library, ensure accessibility, and drive design-to-code workflows.

The ideal candidate has 7+ years in product design with design-system leadership, a strong portfolio, expert Figma skills, and a track record influencing stakeholders in a fast-growing SaaS environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of product design experience, with 3+ years owning or significantly contributing to a design system at a product company.
• Outstanding portfolio showing systems-level thinking, component craft, and impact at scale.
• Exceptional visual design taste with typography, color, spacing and interaction quality.
• Expert-level Figma skills: component architecture, variables, tokens, auto-layout and a production-ready shared library.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture, strategy, and evolution of the design system across web and mobile surfaces.
• Design and ship production-ready components with craft: states, variants, interactions, responsive behavior, accessibility.
• Collaborate with frontend engineers to translate decisions into code with shared ownership of quality and parity.
• Create clear documentation and usage guidance for teams to act on immediately.
• Build governance models balancing system integrity with speed for product teams.
• Conduct audits to identify gaps and improve component coverage and design-to-code parity.
• Lead evaluation of AI-powered tooling integrations into design and development workflows.
• Evolve the system toward an agentic workflow.

Skills

Systems thinking

Design system

Figma

React basics

Communication

Cross-functional

Accessibility

Tools

Figma

Storybook

GitHub

AI tooling

Job description

Purpose in Every Position

Pebl puts a world of talent at your fingertips. With our AI-powered Global Work Platform™, companies can hire, pay, and manage employees in 185+ countries—removing risk, red tape, and guesswork from global growth. Backed by more than a decade of compliance leadership and local expertise, Pebl helps businesses move fast, stay compliant, and scale with confidence. With Pebl, companies everywhere can hire great talent anywhere.

Where Your Work Moves the Needle.

At Pebl, every team member drives our success. Joining us means more than filling a role—you’re accountable for results and impact. Our values guide how we operate, execute, and collaborate across borders. By putting them into action, you'll help us scale faster, compete harder, and lead the future of global work.

What Makes You a Great Fit

Design systems are infrastructure. They determine how fast teams move, how consistent the product feels, and how much trust users place in every interaction. We're looking for a designer who understands this deeply — someone who brings both systems-level thinking and exceptional craft to the work.

In this role, you'll own and evolve our design system end-to-end: the component library, the token architecture, the documentation, and the workflows that connect design to production. You'll work in close partnership with engineering and product to ensure the system scales across web and mobile surfaces — and that it stays useful, adoptable, and ahead of the curve as our product and tooling landscape evolves.

This is a high-ownership, high-visibility role. You'll shape the shared language that every product team works from, and influence how designers and engineers across the org build together.

How You'll Make an Impact:

• Own the architecture, strategy, and evolution of the design system — components, tokens, patterns, and documentation — across web and mobile surfaces

• Design and ship production-ready components with a high bar for craft: well-defined states, variants, interaction models, responsiveness, and accessibility baked in from the start

• Partner closely with frontend engineering to ensure system decisions translate cleanly into code — with shared ownership of quality, parity, and maintainability

• Create clear, opinionated documentation and usage guidance: best practices, anti-patterns, decision frameworks, and contribution standards that teams can act on immediately

• Build and maintain governance models that balance system integrity with the speed product teams need

• Conduct regular audits to identify inconsistencies, gaps, and opportunities to improve component coverage and design-to-code parity

• Lead the evaluation and integration of AI-powered design tooling — including Figma AI, MCP integrations, StoryBook MCP and generative workflows — into how the system is built and consumed

• Anticipate shifts in the product, platform, and tooling landscape, and evolve the system proactively towards an agentic workflow.

Let's Connect If You Have:

• 7+ years of product design experience, with at least 3 years owning or significantly contributing to a design system at a product company

• An outstanding portfolio demonstrating systems-level thinking, component craft, and real impact at scale

• Extraordinary visual design taste — a rigorous, opinionated eye for typography, color, spacing, and interaction quality that raises the bar across every surface

• Expert-level Figma skills: component architecture, variables, tokens, auto-layout, and the discipline to keep a shared library production-aligned

• Comfort working across the design-to-code workflow — you know your way around design tokens, Storybook, and GitHub, and can collaborate closely with engineers on implementation

• Strong understanding of front-end fundamentals (HTML, CSS, React or equivalent) and how design decisions translate into code

• Knowledge of accessibility standards and a commitment to inclusive design baked into every component by default

• Strong written communication skills — you write documentation that is clear, opinionated, and easy to act on

• Track record of leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing senior stakeholders on system strategy and investment

Bonus Points

• Experience integrating AI tools into design and development workflows — AI-assisted prototyping, automated component generation, design-to-code pipelines

• Background building or contributing to open-source design systems

• Familiarity with design-to-code automation tools and AI-driven product development workflows

• External thought leadership through writing, speaking, or open-source contributions in the design systems space

• Experience in enterprise SaaS, fintech, or other complex, data-dense product environments

Why This Role Matters

A strong design system isn't just a component library — it's a force multiplier. It's what lets teams move faster without sacrificing quality. It's what keeps a product feeling coherent as complexity grows. And in an era where AI tools are increasingly part of the design and development workflow, a well-structured system becomes the foundation everything else is built on. We are a fast paced company, and impact is made fast.

Our Commitment to You

At Pebl, we're committed to supporting our team with comprehensive rewards and benefits designed to meet diverse needs across roles and locations. Our core offerings include:

• Flexible Time Off – Take the time you need to recharge.

• Parental Leave – Support for growing families.

• Health and Dental Insurance – Where applicable, to cover you and your loved ones.

• Retirement Savings + Employee Incentive Plan – Plan for the future while sharing our success.

Please visit our career page for more information.

Pebl is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

We power global teams and believe diverse perspectives drive innovation and impact. Employment decisions at Pebl are based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. We're committed to fostering an inclusive culture where every teammate can thrive and do the best work of their career—anywhere in the world.