Design Systems Lead: Cross-Platform Tokens & Coherence

Perplexity; California (MO); On-site; USD 220,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking a Design Systems Lead to own and bootstrap a semantic token system across platforms. You’ll live in GitHub and stay fluent in Figma to keep design and engineering aligned.

This 50/50 role emphasizes visual quality, component APIs, accessibility (WCAG), and documentation to drive adoption across product teams, with governance for contributions and a roadmap that balances innovation with stability.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience owning design systems at large organizations.
• 50/50 design‑engineer, equally credible in visuals and in code.
• Impeccable eye for visual design.
• Fluency in Figma, but primarily living in GitHub.
• Experience designing and maintaining semantic design tokens and scalable component APIs.
• Strong documentation and cross‑functional partnership.

Responsibilities

• Bootstrap and own a semantic token system across platforms and frameworks.
• Own the design system repo on GitHub: source of truth, versioning, releases, changelog.
• Set and uphold a high bar for visual design quality across surfaces.
• Encode mobile, web, and React UI differences into the system.
• Define and run the contribution model and governance for inbound contributions.
• Keep design and engineering in sync, bridging Figma and code end‑to‑end.
• Own clear documentation to drive adoption with onboarding and office hours.
• Bake in accessibility (WCAG) and theming (dark mode) by default.
• Maintain a system roadmap balancing net‑new work, migrations, and deprecations.
• Bring AI tooling into the design systems workflow.
• Operate with autonomy in a fast‑moving, ambiguous environment.

Skills

Design systems ownership

Design‑engineer mix

Figma proficiency

GitHub ownership

Accessibility standards (WCAG)

Documentation & onboarding

Component APIs design

AI tooling integration

Ambiguity tolerance

Tools

GitHub

Figma

Storybook

React UI

Job description

Perplexity is seeking a Design Systems Lead to own and bootstrap a semantic token system across platforms. You’ll live in GitHub and stay fluent in Figma to keep design and engineering aligned.

This 50/50 role emphasizes visual quality, component APIs, accessibility (WCAG), and documentation to drive adoption across product teams, with governance for contributions and a roadmap that balances innovation with stability.