Head of Design Systems (UX) - Director

What you’ll do 

Vision, strategy, and governance 

• Set the multi-year vision and roadmap for the enterprise design system—covering design tokens, components, patterns, documentation, and platform services—aligned to business priorities, risk, digital accessibility, and engineering strategy. 

• Establish and chair cross-functional governance (Design, Product, Engineering, Brand, Accessibility, Compliance, Security, and Architecture) with clear contribution and change-management models. 

• Define adoption strategy, KPIs/OKRs, and incentives to drive measurable outcomes across lines of business and functions. 

Platform consolidation & migration (multi-system → unified platform) 

• Inventory and assess existing/legacy design systems across businesses/functions (tokens, components, code stacks, documentation quality, accessibility posture, and adoption). 

• Define a convergence strategy: token mapping & theming, component equivalence matrix, de-duplication rules, and brand harmonization guidelines. 

• Create a phased migration plan with success criteria, deprecation timelines, risk controls, and a documented rollback path. 

• Provide tooling and automation (e.g., codemods, lint rules, UI audits, visual-regression baselines) to accelerate safe migration. 

• Stand up a contribution/exception process and a comms plan, with dashboards to track migration progress and impact. 

System architecture & engineering excellence 

• Lead engineering for the system’s codebase (e.g., Web Components/React/Angular, TypeScript, Storybook, CI/CD, package distribution/registries) and partner with Architecture on standards: design tokens, theming, motion, internationalization (i18n) and right-to-left (RTL) support. 

• Ensure quality through automated testing (unit/visual regression), performance budgets, security scans, and a versioning/release strategy (safe migrations, deprecation policies). 

• Integrate the system into product pipelines (e.g., GitHub/GitLab and internal developer portals) to reduce design-to-engineering friction and improve time-to-market, with opinionated pull/merge templates, required reviewers, and branch protections. 

Art direction & brand stewardship 

• Serve as the art director and custodian of our digital visual brand—color, typography, iconography, motion, and imagery—ensuring brand consistency and accessibility across channels. 

• Guide creative expression across retail, commercial, institutional, and employee experiences, balancing brand distinctiveness with regulatory and accessibility requirements. 

AI-powered platform & automation 

• Agentic workflows for design-to-code, pattern suggestions, component development and migration, unit testing, and knowledge & documentation playbooks. 

• Automated accessibility controls (e.g., token-level contrast rules, Axe/Lighthouse CI, alt-text and content checks) embedded in design and build pipelines. 

• Knowledge & retrieval over documentation and usage guidelines (RAG), plus evaluation frameworks, guardrails, and auditability to meet model-governance expectations. 

Design operations, tooling, and research 

• Own the portfolio of design and research tools (e.g., Figma Enterprise libraries /branching /tokens plugins; platforms like Matomo / UserTesting / Qualtrics) including licensing, supplier management, financials, and workflow standards. 

• Define contribution workflows, templates, and content standards for documentation sites; ensure discoverability and self-service onboarding. 

Accessibility, compliance, and risk 

• Embed WCAG (latest versions) and regional requirements into tokens, components, patterns, and governance—treating accessibility as a default. 

• Partner with Legal/Compliance, InfoSec, Model Risk, and In-Business Risk & Controls on standards, audits, and evidence to support internal controls, SOX/PCI/data-privacy, and AI model governance. 

• Establish telemetry and reporting that links design-system adoption to risk reduction and customer outcomes. 

Content systems & CMS integration 

• Partner with Content Design and Engineering on CMS strategy (e.g., headless CMS such as Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)), ensuring components, patterns, and editorial workflows are integrated, versioned, and accessible. 

• Define guidance for localization (L10n)—the translation and regional adaptation of content—alongside i18n foundations, including pluralization rules, date/number/currency formats, time zones, and RTL layout mirroring (using CSS logical properties). 

• Provide standards for personalization, disclosure content, and omnichannel publishing to maintain brand and compliance at scale. 

People leadership and culture 

• Lead, grow, and mentor a global team of designers, developers, strategists, writers, and producers; build clear career ladders and communities of practice. 

• Foster an inclusive, accountable, and outcomes-oriented culture grounded in craft excellence, technical rigor, and measurable impact.