Senior Design Systems Specialist

Responsibilities

• Own the development, documentation, and ongoing refinement of Grindr's core design system - components, tokens, patterns, and the guidelines that govern how they are used.
• Partner directly with product designers and engineers to ensure the system is adopted consistently and evolves to meet real product needs.
• Identify and resolve design inconsistencies across the core app, driving toward a more coherent and efficient product experience.
• Contribute strong visual design craft to the system - not just structural rigor, but considered, polished execution that raises the quality bar for the whole product.
• Operate with a high degree of autonomy in a lean environment - prioritize effectively, make defensible decisions without heavy process, and move fast without creating debt.
• Lead the charge on integrating our design system with AI tools.

• 5+ years of product or visual design experience, with at least 2-3 years of focused design systems ownership - building or significantly evolving a system, not just contributing to one.
• Demonstrated experience working in smaller or mid-size companies where you built or maintained systems with limited resources and without a dedicated systems team around you.
• Strong visual design skills - typography, color, iconography, spacing, and motion - with a portfolio that shows craft alongside systems thinking.
• Proficiency in Figma, including component architecture, variables, auto layout, and design token management.
• Track record of partnering with engineers to implement design systems in code - comfortable working across the design-to-development handoff.
• Experience documenting systems clearly for audiences with varying levels of design fluency - product designers, engineers, and non-design stakeholders.