Design System Lead - Product & Engineering

Shift4 (NYSE: FOUR) is boldly redefining commerce by simplifying complex payments ecosystems across the world. As the leader in commerce-enabling technology, Shift4 powers billions of transactions annually for hundreds of thousands of businesses in virtually every industry. For more information, visit www.shift4.com.

Summary

Our Product Design team works across multiple product lines, from web to Android and POS hardware. We are looking for a Design System Lead to lead the unification of the visual language of the Shift4 portfolio and development of a shared design system. You will own the design system end-to-end, from token architecture and component governance to overseeing its implementation across Shift4 portfolio. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role at the intersection of design systems, front-end engineering, and modern AI workflows.

Responsibilities

• Assess the current state of our design systems across design and engineering, identify gaps and duplication, and establish a practical roadmap for unification, migration, and ongoing governance.

• Own, evolve, and consolidate our design system for web, mobile, and POS products.

• Define and maintain scalable token architecture, component libraries, theming, accessibility standards, and cross-product patterns.

• Lead the migration of existing and legacy interfaces to the shared design system

• Drive design-to-code alignment between Figma and production, establishing practical workflows that connect design, design system code, and production.

• Partner closely with product teams to translate design system foundations into production, accelerate component migration, identify inconsistencies, and improve adoption across products.

• Explore AI-assisted opportunities to automate repetitive design system work.

• Establish clear design system standards and review mechanisms that prevent teams from creating redundant or non-compliant components and ensure new work aligns with the shared system.

• Work closely with Product and Engineering leads to ensure the design system accelerates product development rather than creating additional processes or rework.

• Mentor designers on implementation-aware design, token usage, systems thinking.

• Create practical documentation, examples, and guidelines that help product teams correctly adopt and contribute to the design system.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in Product Design, Design Systems, or UX Engineering roles.

• Proven track record building, evolving, and implementing production-ready design systems at scale.

• Deep expertise in token architecture, theming, component variants, accessibility, and cross-platform design systems.

• Strong design skills and understanding of design system best practices, governance, and design-to-code workflows.

• Hands-on experience with web and mobile technologies (nice to have React, ShadCN, Compose and Material 3), with a strong understanding of how design system components, tokens, and patterns are implemented in production code.

• Experience in working with front-end engineers on design systems implementation.

• Clear communicator who can align design and engineering around shared conventions and technical constraints.

Nice‑to‑have

• Experience in fintech, commerce, POS, or SaaS product environments.

• Experience migrating legacy design systems or products to a new unified system.

• Experience using AI to automate or accelerate design system work.

• Experience contributing directly to design system code or front-end repositories.

• Background in prototyping advanced or AI-assisted user experiences.

What success looks like

• The design system is successfully adopted across web, mobile, and POS products.

• Product teams ship faster because the design system accelerates decisions instead of creating rework.

• Figma and production stay tightly aligned, with designers and engineers working from a consistent source of truth.

• AI-assisted workflows meaningfully accelerate design work.

• The design team produces more consistent, implementation-aware work.

• The system has modern, maintainable foundations that scale as Shift4 adds products, platforms, and people.

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We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.