Lead Product Designer, Design Systems

HighLevel; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

HighLevel is seeking a Lead Product Designer, Design Systems to shape the design system behind HighLevel's product experience, used by product teams across the company and by our developer community. You have spent 7+ years designing complex digital products and evolving design systems.

Speed is a core value here, and AI-assisted building by designers, product managers and engineers keeps us moving. This role is centered on creating primitives, templates and governance to enable scalable,

Qualifications

• 7+ years of relevant product design experience, including building or leading a multi-team design system.
• An exceptionally strong portfolio with at least one system-level case study that covers your role, architecture, governance and measurable impact
• Advanced visual and interaction design craft, with strong care for hierarchy, layout, typography, grids, spacing, motion, usability, accessibility and product quality
• Expert command of Figma libraries, variables, modes, component properties and token pipelines, with a record of architecting scalable systems across teams and connecting them to AI tools
• Deep fluency in front-end development, including HTML, CSS and component frameworks such as React or Vue, with the ability to review implementations for fidelity
• Hands-on experience vibe coding prototypes with AI coding tools such as Claude Code or Cursor to test primitives, templates and patterns before production
• Deep knowledge of WCAG and hands-on experience designing and testing accessible components
• A clear point of view on how design systems should support AI-assisted development, plus experience designing AI-driven or intelligent interfaces
• Strong cross-functional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex ideas, lead critiques and workshops and persuade engineers, product managers, designers and senior stakeholders through rationale, evidence and craft

Responsibilities

• Lead strategy and execution for one or more areas of the design system, grounded in product needs, usage data and technical constraints
• Define and evolve visual foundations, including tokens, theming, color, typography, spacing, iconography and motion
• Design and refine components and patterns, including anatomy, states, variants, responsive behavior, edge cases and failure states
• Create primitives, templates and starter kits that help teams build quickly with AI tools while staying on-system
• Encode visual, interaction, content and accessibility rules as documentation and machine-readable guidance that AI coding tools and agents can follow
• Partner with front-end engineers on token architecture, component APIs and implementation fidelity so Figma, documentation and code stay in sync
• Shape contribution, versioning, deprecation and governance models that let the system grow without fragmentation
• Guide product teams onto the system, study how it's used in what ships and feed what you learn back into it
• Drive innovation by staying ahead of emerging trends in design and technology
• Set standards for usability, accessibility, interaction quality and visual consistency, and mentor designers through critique and system reviews
• Collaborate effectively across US, UK and India time zones in a 100% remote environment

Skills

Product design

System design

Figma

HTML/CSS

React/Vue

AI-driven design

Cross-functional leadership

Accessibility

Communication

Tools

Claude Code

Cursor

Figma

Job description

About us

HighLevel is an AI-powered business operating system that gives agencies, entrepreneurs and SMBs the infrastructure to build, automate and scale. Today, HighLevel supports SMBs across 150+ countries, fueling community-driven growth rooted in real customer outcomes. To date, businesses operating on HighLevel have generated over $7 billion in ecosystem value, demonstrating the impact of shared infrastructure at scale. By centralizing conversations, automation and intelligence into one system, we help businesses move faster, reduce complexity and execute efficiently. Behind the platform, HighLevel powers more than 4 billion API hits and 2.5 billion message events daily. With 250 terabytes of distributed data, 250+ microservices and over 1 million domain names supported, our architecture is built for performance, resilience and long-term scalability.

Our people

With over 2,000 team members across 10+ countries, HighLevel operates as a global, remote-first organization built for speed and ownership. We value initiative, clarity and execution, creating space for ambitious people to build systems that support millions of businesses worldwide. Here, innovation thrives, ideas are celebrated and people come first, no matter where they call home.

Our impact

Every month, HighLevel enables more than 1.5 billion messages, 200 million leads and 20 million conversations for the more than 1 million businesses we support. Behind those numbers are real people building independence, expanding opportunity and creating measurable impact. We're proud to be a part of that. Learn more about us on our YouTube Channel or Blog Posts.

About the Role

We are seeking a Lead Product Designer, Design Systems to shape the design system behind HighLevel's product experience, used by product teams across the company and by our developer community. You have spent 7+ years designing complex digital products and evolving design systems used by multiple teams.

Speed has always been a core HighLevel virtue, and AI-assisted building by designers, product managers and engineers is making us faster still. Our design system must keep pace: beyond tokens and components, it needs primitives, templates and guidance that help every AI-assisted build start from strong defaults.

As a lead individual contributor on the Design Systems team, you will treat the system as a product with its own customers, roadmap and success measures, partnering closely with design leadership, front-end engineers and product teams.

We expect candidates at this level to demonstrate advanced visual and interaction design judgment, deep systems thinking and the ability to raise quality through standards, documentation, critique and mentorship.

You should embrace AI as central to how you work, not an add-on. This role is based in India, with flexibility for candidates in the United States or the United Kingdom. Experience designing B2B SaaS, platform, CRM, workflow-heavy or SMB software experiences is highly valuable. Applications without a portfolio that includes design system work will not be considered.

What You'll Do

• Lead strategy and execution for one or more areas of the design system, grounded in product needs, usage data and technical constraints
• Define and evolve visual foundations, including tokens, theming, color, typography, spacing, iconography and motion
• Design and refine components and patterns, including anatomy, states, variants, responsive behavior, edge cases and failure states
• Create primitives, templates and starter kits that help teams build quickly with AI tools while staying on-system
• Encode visual, interaction, content and accessibility rules as documentation and machine-readable guidance that AI coding tools and agents can follow
• Partner with front-end engineers on token architecture, component APIs and implementation fidelity so Figma, documentation and code stay in sync
• Shape contribution, versioning, deprecation and governance models that let the system grow without fragmentation
• Guide product teams onto the system, study how it's used in what ships and feed what you learn back into it
• Drive innovation by staying ahead of emerging trends in design and technology
• Set standards for usability, accessibility, interaction quality and visual consistency, and mentor designers through critique and system reviews
• Collaborate effectively across US, UK and India time zones in a 100% remote environment

What We Are Looking For

• 7+ years of relevant product design experience, including building or leading a multi-team design system
• An exceptionally strong portfolio with at least one system-level case study that covers your role, architecture, governance and measurable impact
• Advanced visual and interaction design craft, with strong care for hierarchy, layout, typography, grids, spacing, motion, usability, accessibility and product quality
• Expert command of Figma libraries, variables, modes, component properties and token pipelines, with a record of architecting scalable systems across teams and connecting them to AI tools
• Deep fluency in front-end development, including HTML, CSS and component frameworks such as React or Vue, with the ability to review implementations for fidelity
• Hands-on experience vibe coding prototypes with AI coding tools such as Claude Code or Cursor to test primitives, templates and patterns before production
• Deep knowledge of WCAG and hands-on experience designing and testing accessible components
• A clear point of view on how design systems should support AI-assisted development, plus experience designing AI-driven or intelligent interfaces
• Strong cross-functional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex ideas, lead critiques and workshops and persuade engineers, product managers, designers and senior stakeholders through rationale, evidence and craft

How You Work

• You raise the bar for consistency, craft and product quality across the teams that build with the system
• You thrive at high shipping velocity and see the design system as what makes speed and quality compatible
• You know when a problem needs a new primitive or component and when it needs better guidance
• You build trust through warmth, candor, accountability and genuine respect for your teammates as people
• You enjoy leading collaboration across time zones and cultural contexts, including with US- and India-based teammates
• You advocate for accessibility, inclusion and ethical design

$150,000 - $190,000 a year

EEO Statement

The company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. As an employer subject to affirmative action regulations, we invite you to voluntarily provide the following demographic information. This information is used solely for compliance with government recordkeeping, reporting, and other legal requirements. Providing this information is voluntary and refusal to do so will not affect your application status. This data will be kept separate from your application and will not be used in the hiring decision.