Principal Design Engineer; AI & Design Systems

One North is a digital experience agency that combines curiosity, scale, and agility to shape the future. As part of TEKsystems, a leading provider of business and technology services, we offer boutique solutions to solve complex problems. Our multidisciplinary teams of strategists, designers, and technologists excel in research and discovery, experience strategy, design, experience management, and technology implementation. Whether clients are establishing a vision for an experience or optimizing an existing one, we help businesses understand their audiences, design experiences, maximize technology, and bring their digital ideas to life.

The world’s most successful companies rely on us to forge the future through electrifying work that sparks innovation and drives results.

Here’s what the opportunity supported through our TEKsystems Global Services (TGS) Talent Acquisition Team requires:

Position Overview

One North is seeking an experienced AI practitioner who can build and consult at the intersection of design and engineering. At One North, the Principal Design Engineer is one of the most forward-leaning roles in our practice; a person who uses artificial intelligence as a primary creative and technical instrument, and who brings that capability to bear on the hardest problems in design systems and design-to-code work.

This role will actively shape how One North and our clients work: defining AI-augmented pipelines, building agentic tooling, and demonstrating what's possible when someone with deep systems thinking and engineering skill treats AI as a first-class collaborator.

The Principal Design Engineer (AI & Design Systems) will ideally be based in the Chicago area for a light hybrid onsite/remote work model, but we are open to remote locations across the U.S.

Responsibilities

• Artificial Intelligence Focus

o Partner with agency leadership on One North's exploration of AI in design-to-code pipelines: identifying, testing, and integrating tools that meaningfully accelerate or improve design system work

o Build agentic workflows that automate high-friction parts of the design system lifecycle: component scaffolding, documentation generation, token logic, contract authoring, and QA

o Develop and maintain prompt engineering practices for design system use cases, including structured prompting for component APIs, usage guidelines, and accessibility annotations

o Integrate MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers and LLM-powered tooling into design and development workflows in ways that are practical, repeatable, and shareable

o Contribute to internal AI capability-building: documenting what you learn, training teammates, and helping the agency develop a point of view on AI in our craft

o Apply AI tools fluidly across your own daily work (code generation, design exploration, documentation, and system scaffolding) and push the boundaries of what those tools can do in a design systems context

• Figma SME

Figma is a strategic platform for One North, and this role requires genuine expert-level command of it. The Principal Design Engineer will operate at the advanced edge of Figma's capabilities.

o Stay current with Figma's evolving platform, including AI features, Dev Mode capabilities, and third-party integrations, and bring that knowledge back to the team

o Participate in Figma alpha and beta programs to evaluate new features before general release, forming clear recommendations on readiness and fit for client application

o Monitor and assess Figma product developments (new releases, acquisitions, and platform expansions) and lead the internal process of evaluating, operationalizing, and establishing standards around relevant new capabilities

o Architect and maintain Figma-based design systems with the same structural rigor as a production codebase, including variables, tokens, component properties, advanced auto layout, and the full token pipeline bridging Figma to code

o Advise clients on Figma tools and workflows that extend the value of their platform investment, serving as a credible strategic resource on what the platform can do and where it is headed

o Maintain active engagement with Figma's broader…