Sr Product Manager, Design Systems

Description

The Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS) is the industry-defining, flagship framework that powers the user interfaces of the world's most trusted CRM. As a Senior Product Manager for SLDS, you will be the primary owner of platform health and roadmap across SLDS 1 and SLDS 2, ensuring our massive global base of developers and designers can build with confidence and give both pro-code developers and declarative builders the tools to make Salesforce their own.

This is a craft-focused, execution-intensive role. You will work closely with engineering, design, and accessibility specialists to ship consistent, high-quality increments that keep SLDS the trusted foundation it has always been.

• Shape the product roadmap for SLDS UI customization, covering both the pro-code to no-code/low-code user customization spectrum.
• Define requirements and acceptance criteria for new styling capabilities, ensuring they work consistently and support the full spectrum of customer use cases from ISV partners to enterprise admins.
• Collaborate deeply with design and engineering on strategy and execution.
• Prioritize opportunities based on user insights, data, and business objectives, adapting quickly to evolving needs and signals.

• Drive the product roadmap for the Design Systems website, the primary destination for developer and designer documentation, component references, and contribution guidance.
• Define and prioritize improvements to maximize builder self-service and reduce support burden.
• Collaborate with content, engineering, design and the broader community to keep documentation accurate, comprehensive, and up to date.

• Own the backlog and release roadmap for SLDS 1 and SLDS 2: balancing new enhancements, bug resolution, technical debt, and ongoing compliance work to keep the system healthy and trustworthy at scale.
• Maintain absolute backward compatibility; every update must seamlessly support existing customer implementations without disruption.
• Collaborate with design tooling teams to ensure Figma UI kits, linters, and validators stay in sync with the component library.

• 5+ years of product management experience, with meaningful time on design systems, component libraries, developer tools, or frontend platforms at scale.
• Deep understanding of CSS architecture, design tokens, and component-level styling. You can speak fluently with engineers about the tradeoffs of a styling API decision.
• Genuine fluency bridging design and engineering: you understand the DOM, CSS, accessibility specs (ARIA, screen reader behavior), and Figma natively.
• Experience writing rigorous acceptance criteria, managing agile backlogs, and leading cross-functional delivery.
• Strong analytical instincts — comfortable interpreting telemetry, accessibility audits, and user research to drive prioritization.
• Clear, concise communicator across technical and non-technical audiences.

• Hands-on familiarity with SLDS, Lightning Web Components, or another enterprise-scale design system (e.g., Carbon, Fluent, Material, Spectrum).
• Prior experience as a designer, front-end engineer, or design technologist. You’ve built with the system before you managed it.
• Deep familiarity with design token architecture and tooling pipelines (e.g., Style Dictionary, Theo) and how tokens flow from design decisions to code.
• Experience owning a component library, you understand the human and technical cost of breaking changes, and you are an accessibility champion.

For roles in San Francisco and Los Angeles:
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Salesforce will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.