Senior or Staff Design Engineer, Design Systems

Harvey, Inc.; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 206,000 - 315,000; Full time

Job summary

Harvey, Inc. is seeking a Senior or Staff Product Designer to define and advance an AI-native design system that connects design, engineering, and product across fast-scaling contexts.

You will own principles, components, tokens, and governance to ensure consistency as the product grows in complexity. You will collaborate with frontend, platform teams, and AI specialists to ship production-ready system components, push architectural boundaries, and raise the bar for system quality and

Qualifications

• 5+ years (Senior) / 8+ years (Staff) of product design experience with ownership of design systems in complex product environments.
• Strong portfolio showing system-thinking, quality, and visual cohesion.
• Deep design systems knowledge from tokens to scalable architectures and future directions.
• Excellent communication of system decisions to designers, engineers, and cross-functional partners.

Responsibilities

• Build an AI-native design system that sets the bar for design quality across Design, Engineering, and Product through technical direction.
• Design, prototype, and ship production-ready system components with frontend and platform engineering, ensuring quality and performance.
• Define and evolve core design system foundations (components, tokens, patterns, theming) that scale across AI-powered experiences.
• Shape APIs, token structures, and theming patterns with engineers, not after them.
• Establish governance, deprecation models, and contribute to system integrity while maintaining velocity.
• Embed accessibility, responsiveness, and performance into the system by default.
• Raise the bar for system quality through design reviews, critique, and hands-on work across teams.
• Anticipate future product needs and evolve the system as Harvey scales.
• Own AI design workflows and best practices for prototyping and shipping with AI.

Skills

Design systems

Design leadership

System architecture

Design engineering comms

Tools

Design tokens

Theming

Job description

Senior or Staff Product Designer, Design Systems

Why Harvey

At Harvey, we’re transforming how legal and professional services operate. By combining frontier agentic AI, an enterprise-grade platform, and deep domain expertise, we’re reshaping how critical knowledge work gets done for decades to come.

This is a rare chance to help build a generational company at a true inflection point. We have strong product-market fit and world-class investor support. We’re scaling fast and defining a new category in real time. The work is ambitious, the bar is high, and the opportunity for growth — personal, professional, and financial — is unmatched.

Our team moves fast, takes ownership, and is deeply committed to the mission — operating with intensity, staying close to our customers, and pushing each other for excellence. We live by three values: Decisiveness, Simplicity, and Job's Not Finished. We act quickly on clear judgment over perfect information, we believe simplicity is what scales, and we're never satisfied with where we are. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who share that drive, we'd love to build with you.

At Harvey, the future of professional services is being written today — and we’re just getting started.

Role Overview

Harvey designs and builds for a legal industry being reshaped by AI, moving with the urgency and ambition the moment demands, not just adapting to change but architecting it. As a Design Systems Designer at Harvey, you will define the foundations that make our product coherent, scalable, and trustworthy as it grows in complexity. The design system is not just a library of components. It is the shared language between design, engineering, and AI that ensures consistency, quality, and confidence across every interaction.

This is a design role with unusual technical depth. You lead with design: craft, systems thinking, and a strong point of view on product experience. But you're equally at home in architecture and implementation. You understand how tokens are structured, how components are composed, and how systems are built to scale, and you use that fluency to push the system forward rather than hand decisions over the wall.

We're looking for someone who has lived through the evolution of the discipline, someone who understands not just how modern design systems work, but why they're built the way they are, and where the field is heading, especially as AI-native products reshape what a design system needs to be.

This role will report to the Design org, and will be based in SF, NYC, or Toronto.

What you’ll do

Build an AI-native design system that sets the bar for design quality for Design, Engineering, and Product through technical direction and collaboration

Design, prototype, and ship production-ready system components in tight collaboration with frontend and platform engineering, with shared ownership of quality, performance, and maintainability

Define and evolve the core design system foundations (components, patterns, and tokens) that scale across complex, AI-powered experiences

Push both the architecture and the implementation of the system: shape component APIs, token structure, theming, and composition patterns alongside engineering, not downstream of it

Advocate for technical approaches with confidence, especially in new or ambiguous territory where established patterns don't yet exist

Embed accessibility, responsiveness, and performance into the system by default

Establish clear contribution, governance, and deprecation models that balance velocity with system integrity

Raise the bar for system quality across the product through design reviews, critique, and hands-on work

Build alignment across Design, Engineering, and Product through technical direction and collaboration

Anticipate future product and platform needs, evolving the system proactively as Harvey scales

Own AI design and implementation workflows for the design team, establishing best practices for prototyping and shipping with AI

Establish in-code prototyping patterns that make it easier to be innovative and consistent as designers increasingly leverage IDEs to experiment and ship.

Define AI-assisted design and implementation workflows, establishing best practices for prototyping and shipping with AI

Document system usage and best practices in a way that is clear, practical, and trusted by product teams

What you have

5+ years (Senior) / 8+ years (Staff) of product design experience, with significant ownership of design systems in complex product environments

A design portfolio that demonstrates high design craft in system-level thinking, but a strong point of view on quality, and visual cohesion

Deep design systems expertise, including an understanding of the history and evolution of the discipline. You know why the field moved from style guides to tokens to composable architectures, and you have a point of view on what comes next

Excellent design engineering communication: you articulate system decisions and tradeoffs fluently to designers, engineers, and cross-functional partners

Ability to clearly articulate system decisions and tradeoffs to designers, engineers, and cross-functional partners

Strong knowledge of scalable system architecture and component implementation: component API design, design tokens, theming strategies, and how systems hold up across teams and codebases

Design Engineer experience preferred, but not required in an AI-first world where the boundary between design and engineering is shifting

High ownership: you treat the system as a product, not a ticket queue

Strong opinions, loosely held, being comfortable challenging conventions and evolving best practices as the discipline changes

Comfort operating in ambiguous problem spaces and bringing structure where it doesn't yet exist

Why design systems matter at Harvey

Harvey is an AI-native product. As the system reasons, responds, and adapts in real time, the interface must remain consistent and legible. A strong design system ensures that complexity does not leak into the experience. It enables teams to move faster, reduces cognitive load for users, and builds trust in moments where clarity matters most.

Compensation

$205,760 - $315,000 USD

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Harvey is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing [e-mail]