Design System Lead

We are seeking an experienced Platform Design Systems Lead to guide the development, governance, adoption, and continuous improvement of design-system practices within an assigned digital product platform. This role ensures platform-specific components, design tokens, patterns, documentation, and implementation guidance align with established enterprise design-system standards while supporting scalable, consistent, accessible, and high-quality digital experiences.

The Platform Design Systems Lead will collaborate with design, engineering, product, accessibility, and enterprise design-system teams to translate organizational standards into practical platform solutions. This position focuses on platform-level strategy, governance, documentation, adoption, technical enablement, and design-to-development workflows rather than ownership of the enterprise-wide design system.

The ideal candidate combines strong design-system expertise with front-end technical knowledge, an understanding of CI/CD and release processes, and the ability to influence cross-functional teams. While hands‑on development experience is valuable, the primary focus is on improving design-system adoption, implementation consistency, accessibility, and operational efficiency.

Hybrid in either Vienna VA, Winchester VA or Pensacola FL 3 days per week onsite.

Benefits:

• Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• Employer-Paid Life Insurance
• Employer-Paid Short-Term and Long-Term Disability Insurance
• 401(k)
• Paid Time Off (PTO) that includes Vacation Leave, Sick Leave, and 11 Paid Holidays
• Educational Assistance

Salary: $90-124K

** An In Person interview will be required for this role**

• Define and maintain the platform design-system roadmap in alignment with product objectives, platform priorities, accessibility requirements, and enterprise design-system standards.
• Promote adoption of approved design patterns, components, design tokens, documentation, and contribution practices across the assigned platform.
• Represent platform requirements, constraints, and feedback in enterprise design-system discussions to support practical implementation.
• Provide recommendations to leadership regarding design-system priorities, technical gaps, adoption challenges, risks, and opportunities for improvement.
• Collaborate with design, engineering, product, accessibility, and enterprise design-system teams to ensure platform solutions meet business, user, technical, and accessibility requirements.
• Establish and maintain platform-level governance processes, contribution workflows, intake procedures, decision criteria, and implementation standards.
• Facilitate collaboration between designers, developers, and stakeholders to improve design-to-development handoffs, clarify ownership, and align expectations.
• Coordinate with enterprise design-system partners on cross-platform requirements, standards, and decisions.
• Evaluate front-end implementation feasibility and provide technical guidance regarding design-system components, patterns, and design tokens.
• Partner with front‑end engineers to ensure components and patterns are accessible, performant, reusable, maintainable, and aligned with enterprise standards.
• Support improvements to CI/CD and release processes for design-system assets, including build, testing, documentation, versioning, dependency management, and deployment workflows.
• Identify technical gaps in component libraries, design token pipelines, documentation, and implementation processes and recommend improvements.
• Develop platform implementation guidance, technical examples, and lightweight prototypes as needed.
• Create and maintain design-system documentation using tools such as Storybook, Zeroheight, and other documentation platforms.
• Develop and deliver training materials, workshops, office hours, and onboarding resources to promote consistent design-system adoption.
• Document component usage guidelines, design token applications, accessibility expectations, contribution processes, and engineering handoff standards.
• Provide guidance to platform teams regarding the appropriate use of enterprise standards and platform-specific implementation practices.
• Conduct platform audits to evaluate design consistency, code alignment, accessibility compliance, documentation quality, and design-system adoption.
• Analyze audit results, adoption metrics, and stakeholder feedback to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Monitor emerging design-system technologies, accessibility…