Lead Designer - UI​/UX

AFS is the leading provider of commercial loan lifecycle management software for large U.S. banks, and the AFSVision platform runs the commercial lending operations of many of the largest institutions in the country. The Lead Designer owns user experience and the design system for the full AFS product portfolio — AFSVision's four lending functions, IRIS, Credit Risk Navigator, and the Pricing Dashboard — as the sole design function supporting eight Product Managers across the value stream.

This role exists to make sure that speed under the new AI-first product development lifecycle does not come at the cost of a coherent, usable, and accessible experience for the lenders, credit analysts, and portfolio managers who depend on AFS's products every day. Success is measured by a design system that every product team actually trusts and uses, workflows that hold up under the complexity of commercial lending, and a steady stream of client usability evidence feeding back into the roadmap.

This role owns the creation and maintenance of design system and interaction standards for every AFS product. They are the design authority each Product Manager works with when framing, prototyping, and harvesting opportunities under the Product Development Lifecycle. The Lead Designer decides which new interaction patterns are promoted into the design system, which are sent back for rework, and the service level Product Managers can expect when a pattern needs to be absorbed or a prototype reviewed.

This role has the authority to reject a prototype that forks a component, introduces custom CSS, or falls short of accessibility and workflow usability standards, regardless of the Product Manager's timeline. As the only design function reporting to the Chief Product Officer, the Lead Designer prioritizes and sequences competing design requests across all AFS lending functions and the Data & Business Intelligence portfolio, and escalates capacity constraints to the Chief Product Officer rather than absorbing them silently.

Decisions that would change the design system's foundational tokens or components, commit design capacity beyond what a release can support, or affect the experience across multiple product domains at once are escalated to the Chief Product Officer. This role also operates within AFS's regulated environment, including FFIEC examination, SOC 2, and client audit obligations, so that auditability and accessibility are treated as design inputs rather than downstream concerns.

• Define — the interaction standards, visual language, and design system that govern every AFS product.
• Own — the design system as a staffed service, publishing and holding to a service-level agreement for absorbing new components and reviewing prototypes, so it never becomes the reason a team ships a fork.
• Partner — with each Product Manager from the earliest discovery conversation, using AI to clarify intent, pressure-test assumptions, and draft interaction frameworks before a single frame is drawn.
• Refine — the working prototypes Product Managers build with AI‑assisted tools, pressure‑testing them against approved design‑system components and tokens, and raising fidelity only as far as the underlying question requires.
• Govern — every new interaction pattern surfaced through prototyping, deciding what is promoted into the design system, what is reworked, and what remains disposable.
• Research — lead usability testing and workflow analysis with client users — lenders, credit analysts, portfolio managers — turning sessions into evidence Product Managers can act on, and facilitate discovery workshops that map end‑to‑end workflows.
• Harvest — participate in governance with the…