Principal UX Designer, Design Systems & Tokens

Vanguard; Berwyn (PA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Vanguard is seeking a Principal UX Designer to lead the Design Systems and Practices Team (DS+P). You will shape the Advisor Experience System (AXS), create reusable components, tokens, and documentation, and partner with engineers to ensure scalable, accessible experiences across Vanguard products.

You will guide complex component architectures, establish quality standards, and coach designers in design-system thinking while driving collaboration across multi-disciplinary teams.

Qualifications

• 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 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.
• Deep knowledge of accessibility and ability to incorporate it into system architecture.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

UX design

Design systems

Figma

Accessibility

Documentation

Engineer collaboration

Leadership

Component thinking

Tools

Storybook

Job description

Vanguard is seeking a Principal UX Designer to lead the Design Systems and Practices Team (DS+P). You will shape the Advisor Experience System (AXS), create reusable components, tokens, and documentation, and partner with engineers to ensure scalable, accessible experiences across Vanguard products.

You will guide complex component architectures, establish quality standards, and coach designers in design-system thinking while driving collaboration across multi-disciplinary teams.