Lead UX Designer, Design Systems

Vanguard; Malvern (Chester County); Presencial; USD 140.000 - 190.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

Vanguard is seeking a Principal UX Designer to lead the Design Systems and Practices Team (DS+P) as part of the Advisor Experience System (AXS). This hands-on design leadership role shapes the technical direction, promotes scalable components, and elevates design quality across products and platforms.

You will mentor designers, partner with engineers, and drive documentation, accessibility, and semantic token strategies to ensure a cohesive, robust system that supports complex enterprise

Formación

• Significant UX and product design experience with enterprise design systems.
• Expert knowledge of reusable system design: components, tokens, patterns, and templates.
• Strong visual and interaction design craft, with typography and layout judgment.
• Experience designing complex components with accessibility and constraints.

Responsabilidades

• Lead the technical design and evolution of AXS components, patterns, tokens, templates, and foundations.
• Translate complex needs into reusable, accessible, scalable design solutions.
• Own complex component architecture including variants, states, and responsive behavior.
• Establish a high bar for interaction and systems design quality across the library.
• Collaborate with front-end engineers to align design and code and solve implementation questions.
• Create and maintain documentation and usage guidance for designers and developers.

Conocimientos

Design systems

Design tokens

Component architecture

Accessibility

Documentation

Figma

Collaboration with engineers

Herramientas

Storybook

Figma libraries

Descripción del empleo

Lead UX Designer, Design Systems

Who we are.

The Design Systems and Practices Team (DS+P) brings together systems design, visual strategy, and design practice. DS+P creates the shared foundations, tools, and ways of working that enable teams to build consistent, scalable, and high-quality experiences.

We're looking for a Principal UX Designer who brings deep technical design-system expertise and exceptional design craft. This person knows how to turn complex experience needs into reusable components, patterns, tokens, templates, and guidance that work across products and platforms.

This is a hands-on design leadership role. You'll help set the technical and craft direction of the Advisor Experience System (AXS), FAS's shared design system, solve its most complex design problems, and raise the quality of the system through the work itself. You won't own the overall product vision or roadmap alone, but you will be a critical voice in shaping what the system can support and how it should be built.

What you will do.

• Lead the technical design and continued evolution of AXS components, patterns, tokens, templates, and system foundations.
• Translate complex product and experience needs into solutions that are reusable, accessible, scalable, and practical to implement.
• Own complex component and pattern architecture, including variants, states, behaviors, responsive considerations, and composition.
• Establish a high bar for interaction, visual, and systems design quality across the library.
• Lead design reviews and help the team make sound decisions when requirements, use cases, or technical constraints compete.
• Partner closely with front-end engineers to keep design and code aligned, resolve implementation questions, and ensure the system works as intended.
• Create and maintain clear documentation, usage guidance, specifications, and examples that help designers and developers use the system correctly.
• Identify gaps, inconsistencies, and opportunities to simplify the system before they become larger problems.
• Design foundations that support modern workflows, including semantic tokens, system-accurate prototyping, automated documentation, and AI-assisted design and development.
• Help teams apply the system to real product and marketing experiences without creating one-off solutions that weaken it over time.
• Coach designers in component thinking, pattern design, accessibility, and the practical application of design-system standards.
• Explore tools and workflows that improve the team's efficiency while protecting quality, accessibility, and brand integrity.
• Remain close to the work, stepping into the most difficult design problems and helping bring them through delivery.

What we'd like to see.

• Significant UX and product design experience, including deep experience building or evolving enterprise design systems, component libraries, or scaled pattern ecosystems.
• Expert knowledge of reusable system design, including components, variants, properties, tokens, patterns, templates, and documentation.
• Strong visual and interaction design craft, with excellent judgment across typography, layout, hierarchy, behavior, responsiveness, and content patterns.
• Experience designing complex components and accounting for states, edge cases, accessibility requirements, and implementation constraints.
• Strong command of Figma, including variables, modes, component architecture, library management, prototyping, and modern design-system workflows.
• Experience working closely with engineers to evaluate feasibility, clarify intended behavior, and maintain alignment between design and code.
• A practical understanding of front-end concepts and how design decisions translate into production experiences. This does not need to be a developer role, but technical fluency is important.
• Deep knowledge of accessibility and an ability to incorporate it into system architecture rather than treating it as a final review step.
• Experience producing documentation and usage guidance that is clear, current, and genuinely useful.
• The confidence to make a recommendation, explain the reasoning behind it, and adjust when stronger evidence or constraints emerge.
• The ability to bring structure to ambiguous problems without overcomplicating the solution.
• A collaborative, low-ego approach to design leadership. This role needs someone who can raise the bar while bringing others along.
• A portfolio demonstrating relevant design-system work, complex component thinking, and the ability to move from detailed design decisions to scalable solutions.

A bonus if you have.

• Experience with semantic token architecture, theming, or systems supporting multiple brands, products, or templates.
• Experience connecting Figma libraries to engineering environments such as Storybook.
• Experience with design-system documentation platforms, automated documentation, or workflows that help design and code stay synchronized.
• Working knowledge of AI-assisted design and development workflows, includi