Lead Design Systems Manager (Hybrid)

Clio; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 108,000 - 163,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work

Competitive salary

20 days off

Counseling benefit

RRSP matching

RESP contribution

Clioversary program

Job summary

Clio is hiring a Product Design Manager to lead Design Systems. You will steer governance, token architecture, and cross-functional collaboration across Product, Design, and Engineering to deliver scalable, on-brand UI across web and apps.

You will mentor a team of Design Systems and PLG designers, contribute hands-on where needed, and partner with Brand Marketing to maintain cohesive brand expression. This is a hybrid role with in-office anchors and growth in a fast-paced AI-driven environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of product design experience, including time at a Staff, Principal or Lead level, and 2+ years managing designers or formally leading a design systems team.
• Experience building and running a design system at scale with governance, contribution and versioning across multiple product teams.
• Strong UX and visual craft with knowledge of interaction design, information architecture and accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA).
• Technical fluency with design tokens, component architecture and front-end code; strong collaboration with platform engineers.
• Experience working with Brand and Marketing on brand expression, theming or multi-brand systems.
• Experience designing AI-powered experiences, with trust, transparency and user control considerations.
• Fluency with modern design tools and AI-assisted design workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own the design systems operating model including roadmap, intake, contribution, governance, versioning and health metrics.
• Lead token pipelines, component APIs and design-code parity with Platform Engineering.
• Define AI-native patterns and extend patterns across web, mobile and desktop platforms.
• Oversee onboarding and PLG patterns to accelerate growth experiments.
• Mentor and coach the team, lead critiques and discovery workshops, and ensure high-quality output.

Skills

Design leadership

Design systems

UX design

Cross-functional collaboration

AI in design

Token-based architecture

Frontend parity

Tools

Figma

Claude

Cursor

Job description

Clio is hiring a Product Design Manager to lead Design Systems. You will steer governance, token architecture, and cross-functional collaboration across Product, Design, and Engineering to deliver scalable, on-brand UI across web and apps.

You will mentor a team of Design Systems and PLG designers, contribute hands-on where needed, and partner with Brand Marketing to maintain cohesive brand expression. This is a hybrid role with in-office anchors and growth in a fast-paced AI-driven environment.