Design Systems Lead

Location: Virtual
• United States

Req Number: Req# 413

Date Posted: Posted Friday, October 16, 2026 | Expires Friday, October 23, 2026

The Design Systems Lead oversees the ongoing development of Discovery Education’s design systems and helps streamline the process from design to development.

This role sits at the intersection of design and engineering, responsible for unifying our existing systems (Atlas and Nebula) into a scalable architecture while modernizing how our teams design, prototype, and deliver product experiences.

By aligning designers and engineers around shared infrastructure, this role improves collaboration, reduces duplication, and enables faster, more consistent product development across our ecosystem.

• Audit and evaluate existing design systems (Atlas and Nebula) to identify overlaps, gaps, and opportunities for consolidation.
• Lead the evolution toward a unified, scalable design system architecture supporting multiple products and platforms.
• Define standards for component governance, lifecycle management, and system documentation.
• Implement a clear governance model (standards, contribution workflow, component lifecycle, documentation expectations, and ownership) to drive consistency and adoption.
• Establish flexible system structures that allow components to adapt across products and experiences.
• Own and maintain a unified design system direction (roadmap and decision-making) that consolidates and/or rationalizes Atlas and Nebula over time.

• Serve as the primary liaison between design and engineering teams for design system development.
• Partner with engineers to ensure components translate efficiently from design into production code.
• Align design and development workflows to reduce duplication and improve implementation quality.
• Establish and maintain a design-to-engineering workflow that supports efficient implementation (libraries, tokens, specs, and collaboration practices).

• Research and implement tools that improve design system development and front‑end collaboration.
• Explore emerging technologies, including AI-assisted design and development tools, to improve efficiency and scalability.
• Introduce processes that enable faster prototyping and reduce friction between design and engineering teams.

• Participate in product kickoff discussions with Product Design, Product Management, Curriculum, and Engineering.
• Evaluate new initiatives through the lens of design system scalability and platform consistency.
• Determine which patterns and components should become part of the shared system versus remaining product‑specific.
• Create enablement mechanisms that drive adoption (guidance, office hours, training) and build strong working rhythms with product teams.

• Track design system adoption and metrics across teams and products.
• Measure the impact of system implementation through metrics such as development efficiency, component reuse, design consistency, and team satisfaction.
• Continuously refine system governance and workflows based on product and organizational needs.
• Report regularly on outcomes (adoption, reuse, consistency, and delivery efficiency) and drive continuous improvement based on feedback and data.

• Manages complexity:
  Makes sense of overlapping systems (Atlas/Nebula), competing platform needs, and technical constraints to define a scalable design‑system architecture and governance model.
• Collaborates:
  Builds strong partnerships across Product Design, Engineering, Product Management, and Curriculum to align on standards, drive adoption, and reduce duplication.
• Communicates…