Principal Designer - Design Systems AI skills San Jose , eBay - Governance Accessibility

eBay is a global ecommerce company operating in more than 190 markets and its Design organization creates end-to-end experiences that connect buyers and sellers. The Principal Designer (director-level) will define eBay’s long-term experience vision, work closely with executive leadership to shape strategy and drive alignment, and lead multi-year, enterprise-wide initiatives that scale innovation and impact. The role sits within a customer-focused, collaborative team that works across product, engineering, and business to solve complex problems.

• Define and lead the vision for eBay’s design system, establishing principles, strategy, and a roadmap grounded in measurable business and customer outcomes
• Lead the Design Systems practice, bringing together Design, Product, and Engineering to evolve a shared system and track impact through adoption, efficiency, and product quality metrics
• Remain hands-on in designing foundational patterns, components, interaction models, and frameworks to improve usability, conversion, and overall experience quality
• Evolve the system to be more flexible, scalable, accessible, and expressive across products, platforms, and emerging experiences while aligning to business priorities and performance signals
• Define and drive the go-to-market and adoption strategy for the design system, including positioning, enablement, rollout plans, and partnering to drive awareness, education, onboarding, and sustained usage
• Drive adoption and impact at scale by partnering with teams to remove friction and deliver measurable improvements in quality, consistency, velocity, and key product and business metrics
• Shape how AI changes design systems and practice by experimenting with new tools and approaches focused on measurable gains in speed, quality, and scalability
• Influence senior leaders and cross-functional partners to build alignment around system-level investments, standards, and decisions and connect design system strategy to business impact and operational efficiency

• 15+ years experience leading design systems or platform design at scale, with a track record of shaping systems used across multiple products, teams, and platforms
• Exceptional product design craft with deep expertise in interaction design, visual design, systems thinking, and the details required to create coherent, high-quality experiences
• Ability to think in systems while designing in the details, connecting individual components and patterns to broader product experiences and organizational needs
• Deep understanding of design system architecture and practice, including components, patterns, tokens, accessibility, governance, contribution models, documentation and adoption
• Strong understanding of the relationship between design and front-end technology and ability to partner deeply with Engineering on scalable implementation
• Proven track record to lead, build alignment, and raise the quality of work across a large, matrixed organization
• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills to make complex system decisions clear and build conviction with designers, engineers, product leaders, and executives
• Forward-looking perspective on AI and emerging technology with a willingness to experiment and turn new ideas into practical solutions