Remote Principal Design Systems Architect

Ethos; United States; Remote; USD 165,000 - 292,000; Full time

Job summary

Ethos is building its first Principal Design Systems Designer to establish a scalable UI design system and AI-native pipeline. You will partner with Product Design, Engineering, Brand/Creative, Content Design, and AI tooling efforts to align Figma, Cursor/Claude Code, and Storybook in a single, coherent process.

This 0→1 role focuses on defining taxonomy, token strategy, and reusable components that empower designers, PMs, and engineers to ship on-brand, accessible UI at scale.

Qualifications

• Own design system end-to-end and drive adoption across product teams.
• Bridge design and code with tokens pipelines, APIs, and versioning.
• Champion accessibility within UI components and documentation.
• Leverage AI-assisted design workflows with human-in-the-loop checkpoints.

Responsibilities

• Audit UI and artifacts to standardize and reduce inconsistency.
• Define information architecture and naming taxonomy for the system.
• Create a concrete 0→1 plan prioritizing scalable, ship-ready work.
• Define a scalable token strategy and keep Figma, code tokens, Storybook in sync.
• Translate system into reusable components with accessible APIs and states.
• Own component lifecycle, release notes, deprecations, and handoffs.
• Build a builder-friendly contribution process for designers and engineers.
• Create machine-readable and human-readable documentation.
• Drive adoption through visible product impact and iterative delivery.
• Define how AI assists auditing and maintaining system structure with human review gates.
• Shape pipelines from design prompts to Storybook-validated components.

Skills

Design systems ownership

Design-to-code integration

Accessibility standards

AI-assisted design workflows

Tools

Figma

Storybook

Cursor Code

Job description

Ethos is building its first Principal Design Systems Designer to establish a scalable UI design system and AI-native pipeline. You will partner with Product Design, Engineering, Brand/Creative, Content Design, and AI tooling efforts to align Figma, Cursor/Claude Code, and Storybook in a single, coherent process.

This 0→1 role focuses on defining taxonomy, token strategy, and reusable components that empower designers, PMs, and engineers to ship on-brand, accessible UI at scale.