Staff Product Designer - AI-Driven Design Systems

Vanta; United States; Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Industry-competitive salary and equity

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Parental Leave 16 weeks

Wellness stipend

Remote workspace stipend

Commuter benefits

Family planning benefits

401(k) with immediate vesting

Flexible PTO + 80 hours Sick Time

11 company-paid holidays

Offices in SF, NYC, London, Dublin,Tel

Sydney offices

Job summary

Vanta is seeking a Staff Product Designer to lead Alpaca, its design system, and AI-driven product interfaces. You will shape scalable design systems, define patterns for agent chat and canvas experiences, and partner with engineers and other designers to ship cohesive components and guidelines.

You will mentor designers, advance accessibility, and influence governance and quality standards across the organization, helping navigate ambiguity and drive adoption of a shared system.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience as a product designer, with significant depth in design systems, ideally within complex B2B SaaS
• Deep expertise building and evolving scalable design systems, including component architecture, design tokens, and pattern libraries, plus a strong point of view on how those foundations need to change for AI and agentic product surfaces
• Strong visual design foundation, with mastery of typography, color theory, spacing, interaction design, and accessibility principles. This role requires high craft, not just governance
• Comfort operating in ambiguity where org boundaries (e.g., between Design Systems and AI/Agent product work) aren't fully settled, and the judgment to help shape that structure rather than wait for it
• Experience collaborating closely with front-end engineers, with enough fluency in front-end code to reason credibly about design-to-code fidelity and, ideally, contribute directly
• Expert-level proficiency in Figma, including variants, auto-layout, and design tokens, with experience publishing and managing shared libraries at scale
• Strong soft skills: the ability to influence without direct authority, build alignment across designers, engineers, and leadership who may have competing priorities, and communicate system-level tradeoffs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
• A track record of mentoring other designers and raising the craft and systems literacy of the people around you
• Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for current or future employer sponsorship.
• Open to using AI to amplify their skills and strengthen their work - demonstrating curiosity, a willingness to learn, and sound judgment in applying AI responsibly to improve efficiency and impact

Responsibilities

• Lead the strategy, evolution, and execution of Alpaca, ensuring it scales with the needs of a rapidly growing, increasingly AI-driven product organization
• Extend the design system to support AI and agent product patterns, including agent chat and canvas experiences and components that need to adapt based on runtime or model context
• Partner with product designers and engineers across every product team to define, document, and ship new components, patterns, and guidelines
• Establish and evolve governance models, contribution frameworks, and quality standards that let every designer at Vanta build consistently, including for AI-native surfaces that don't fit traditional static component thinking
• Drive design system adoption through education, tooling, and proactive partnership, especially with teams building agentic features who may be new to systems thinking
• Represent Design Systems and AI Patterns work in cross-functional forums, translating system-level tradeoffs for engineering and product leadership
• Mentor other designers, including senior designers, on systems thinking, component architecture, and how to design well within (and push against) a shared system
• Advocate for accessibility and inclusive design as a foundational requirement across all components, patterns, and documentation

Job description

Vanta is seeking a Staff Product Designer to lead Alpaca, its design system, and AI-driven product interfaces. You will shape scalable design systems, define patterns for agent chat and canvas experiences, and partner with engineers and other designers to ship cohesive components and guidelines.

You will mentor designers, advance accessibility, and influence governance and quality standards across the organization, helping navigate ambiguity and drive adoption of a shared system.