Sr. Product Designer II - Design Systems

EngineersOfAI; United States; Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Instacart is seeking a Product Designer to lead the evolution of their design system. This role involves collaborating with a cross-functional team and ensuring design-to-code fidelity across multiple platforms while enhancing the user experience.

The ideal candidate will have over 6 years of experience in product design, a proven portfolio, and technical fluency with design tools like Figma and Storybook. Join us to help revolutionize the grocery industry!

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in product design, including maintaining a design system.
• Portfolio demonstrating governance and cross-platform consistency.
• Strong understanding of implementation constraints in UX.

Responsibilities

• Own the design system roadmap and align stakeholders.
• Define system UX components and patterns.
• Lead token strategy end to end.
• Establish contribution standards and lifecycle management.
• Create specs with usage guidance and acceptance criteria.
• Build design enablement in context with automation tools.
• Measure adoption and execute enablement programs.

Skills

Design systems mastery

Technical fluency

Collaboration in component-based workflows

Tools

Figma

Storybook

Job description

We're transforming the grocery industry

At Instacart, we invite the world to share love through food because we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. Where others see a simple need for grocery delivery, we see exciting complexity and endless opportunity to serve the varied needs of our community. We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers.

Instacart has become a lifeline for millions of people, and we’re building the team to help push our shopping cart forward. If you’re ready to do the best work of your life, come join our table.

Instacart is a Flex First team

There’s no one-size fits all approach to how we do our best work. Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they do their best work—whether it’s from home, an office, or your favorite coffee shop—while staying connected and building community through regular in-person events. Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work.

Overview

Instacart’s Design Systems & Foundations team builds the shared components, tokens, and guidance that power customer, shopper, retailer, and internal tools at scale. We’re looking for a design-first, technically fluent product designer to lead the evolution of our design system as a product—raising quality, usability, scalability, and adoption across multiple product surfaces.

In this role, you’ll partner closely with engineering and design technologists to ensure design-to-code fidelity, integrate guidance directly inside design and development workflows, and shape a durable “source of truth” that can power automation, guardrails, and AI-assisted workflows. You’ll collaborate with an 8-person foundations team and cross-functional partners to unlock velocity and consistency for product teams serving millions of customers.

About the Job

• Own and drive the design system roadmap—prioritizing by product needs, system health, and adoption friction—while aligning stakeholders on a clear, forward-looking vision.
• Define and evolve system UX: components, patterns, interaction states, responsive behavior, motion, and accessibility defaults that scale across products and platforms.
• Lead token strategy end to end (primitive and semantic), including theming, density, and extensibility, and partner with engineering to maintain consistent component APIs.
• Establish strong governance and lifecycle management: contribution standards, quality bars, review processes, versioning, deprecations, and clear migration plans to reduce system drift.
• Create implementation-aware specs with edge cases, constraints, usage guidance, and acceptance criteria; collaborate in component-based workflows (e.g., Figma libraries, Storybook) to ensure design-to-code fidelity.
• Build design enablement in context—linting rules, templates, and plugin experiences—supported by a structured knowledge model (rules, constraints, examples) that powers automation and AI-assisted support.
• Use AI tools intentionally to streamline audits, consistency checks, migrations, and spec generation; contribute to AI-assisted workflows that help teams adopt changes safely.
• Measure adoption and impact, identify workflow friction, and execute enablement programs that reduce rework, raise consistency, and accelerate safe system evolution.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in product design (or equivalent), including shipping and maintaining a design system adopted by multiple product teams.
• Portfolio showcasing design systems mastery (components, patterns, tokens, governance) and cross-platform consistency; portfolio link required.
• Technical fluency collaborating in component-based workflows (e.g., Figma component libraries and Storybook or equivalent) with a strong understanding of how implementation constraints shape UX.