The Experience Design team is responsible for shaping the end-to-end customer experience across Zopa’s products. Within the team, the Design Systems function provides the foundations that allow product teams to move quickly while delivering consistent, high quality experiences.
We’ve recently rebuilt our design system as part of our move to native, giving us a strong foundation for the future rather than a large legacy estate to untangle. This role is an opportunity to lead that next phase. You’ll own the design system as a strategic platform, helping us scale delivery, improve consistency, strengthen governance and unlock new ways of working through AI-assisted design and development.
You’ll lead a small team and work closely with Product, Engineering and Design leaders to ensure the design system becomes a core enabler of how Zopa builds products in the years ahead.
A day in the life:
Lead and develop a team consisting of a Design Systems Designer and Motion Designer
Define and evolve the governance, processes and operating model for Zopa’s design system
Partner closely with Mobile Engineering to ensure design and code systems remain aligned
Collaborate with Product, Design and Brand stakeholders on system adoption and evolution
Review and prioritise requests for new patterns, components and system enhancements
Define and track measures of system health, adoption, consistency and impact
Help product teams move faster by creating scalable, reusable foundations
Balance hands-on design systems work with strategic leadership and organisational influence
Shape how AI-enabled workflows can leverage the design system to improve delivery speed and quality
Drive consistency across customer experiences while making thoughtful trade-offs where needed
About you:
You’ve led a design system or platform design capability within a product organisation
You bring strong systems thinking across tokens, components, patterns, documentation and governance
You have experience partnering closely with Engineering and understand how design systems translate into code
You’re comfortable working across native mobile experiences
You’ve managed and developed designers and enjoy building high-performing teams
You use evidence and measurable outcomes to guide prioritisation and decision making
You’re confident setting boundaries, making trade-offs and influencing senior stakeholders
You can balance technical depth with strong communication and stakeholder management
You’re able to bring clarity and direction in environments that contain ambiguity
You combine strategic thinking with a pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset
Added bonus
Familiarity with design-to-code pipelines and token architecture
Experience embedding accessibility standards within design systems
Practical experience using AI or automation to improve design workflows
Experience with tools such as Figma MCP, Claude or ChatGPT
Experience in scaling organisations that have grown through multiple stages of maturity
Skills Required
- Led a design system or platform design capability within a product organisation
- Strong systems thinking across tokens, components, patterns, documentation and governance
- Experience partnering closely with Engineering and understanding how design systems translate into code
- Comfortable working across native mobile experiences
- Managed and developed designers and built high-performing teams
- Use evidence and measurable outcomes to guide prioritisation and decision making
- Confident setting boundaries, making trade-offs and influencing senior stakeholders
- Balance technical depth with strong communication and stakeholder management
- Bring clarity and direction in ambiguous environments
- Combine strategic thinking with a pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset
- Familiarity with design-to-code pipelines and token architecture
- Experience embedding accessibility standards within design systems
- Practical experience using AI or automation to improve design workflows
- Experience with tools such as Figma MCP, Claude or ChatGPT
- Experience in scaling organisations through multiple stages of maturity
What We Do
We’re Zopa, and we want to make money work better for you. Our diverse team is united in their mission of creating simple, fair and honest financial products that have the customer’s needs at their heart. We’re proud that this dedication is reflected in our excellent rating on TrustPilot. We’ve always been unapologetically honest with our customers, and value the same in return. Their feedback helps us shape what we build, so we can provide a bank fit for today, and for the future. We’re not the new kids on the block though - we’ve been a pioneering force in finance for 16 years. In 2005, we built the first ever peer-to-peer (P2P) lending company, giving our customers access to loans built for real-life and intelligent investments backed by cutting-edge tech. In 2020, we launched Zopa Bank, meaning we could offer more – like fixed term savings backed by FSCS protection and a credit card to help customers take control of their finances. We’ve lent out over £6 billion and are proud to have made money work better for over half a million people across the UK, whether they were looking to borrow or save.
