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Canva

Lead Product Designer - Design Systems

Full-timeDesign system designer$150,500-$229,000*
Melbourne, Australia
Professional development opportunities
Tuition reimbursement
Parental leave
This job offer is closed.
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Canva’s Commitment and Mission

At Canva, we celebrate diversity. We deeply believe that bringing together diversity of thoughts, perspectives and expression is key to building the best product, team and company. We look for many different skills and abilities, as well as how you can enhance Canva and our culture. So, even if you don’t think you quite meet all of the skills listed or tick all the boxes, we’d still love to hear from you! 

Our mission at Canva is to empower the world to design and since launching in 2013, we have grown exponentially, amassing over 100+ million monthly active users across 190 different countries and a team of over 3,000 people… and the best bit is that we’ve only achieved 1% of what we know we’re capable of. 

Join us and design your future.

The Team

Part of the Product Platform supergroup, the UX Platform’s group mission is ‘to ensure a delightful experience for every user on every device’. The group comprises teams that focus on systems, tooling and guidance for Canva’s Design System (Easel), Accessibility and Internationalisation, to name a few.
Our Design System focuses on two streams of work: the development and maintenance of foundational components and increasing adoption of the design system across the org. Our team’s mission is to build a world-class design system that empowers Canva staff to craft consistent and excellent experiences at scale.


Goals you'll achieve

  • Audit: You'll audit the existing design system and make recommendations for improvements.
  • Evolving components: You'll support our DS teams through component and pattern development, including design, drafting documentation, fixing bugs and refining existing assets and improving tooling.

  • Leading advocacy model: You'll work directly with Product Designers in product teams to enhance cross-group visibility of emerging components and shared patterns, creating exposure to holistic systems problems, thinking and processes.
  • 2026 roadmap: You'll utilise the knowledge and insights you've gained in the first six months to create and promote a long-term visual roadmap that outlines our vision and pinpoints current and future projects necessary to elevate our Design System to a world-class standard.

  • Evolving docs site: In collaboration with the team, you'll lead and define a clear strategy to visually uplift the Easel documentation website to be more robust, easy to navigate and helpful in finding information that helps our consumers make great UI/UX decisions.

About the role you'll be doing

  • Leadership: This is a lead individual contributor role, where you will lead and be accountable for projects, processes and craft mentorship without having any formal people management responsibilities
  • Strategy and vision: You'll own widespread design system changes, you'll work closely with the Engineering Lead to define and articulate Easel's strategy and vision to key stakeholders and the broader team.

  • Planning and delivery: You'll guide prioritisation and decision-making on the health and evolution of the Easel Design System, collaborating with team members to identify and prioritise requirements for upcoming component delivery and establishing a clear path forward for future work.

  • Advocacy and enablement:You'll lead Product Designers and Front-End Engineers across product groups to identify, specify and prioritise holistic UI/UX patterns as reusable components across Canva's suite of products, enabling teams to ship quickly and consistently.
  • Discover and define: You'll actively exploring components and patterns to contribute to the foundational core of our Design Systems component library.
  • Supporting consumers:You'll with Product Designers and Front-End Engineers to answer and guide ad hoc questions and queries, enabling product teams to deliver world-class user interfaces that are usable, useful, and desirable for our users while ensuring our products align with our Design System.
  • Maintain tooling: Scaling the Figma design library through new technological advancements, third-party integrations, optimisation, and general maintenance and support of the Easel Design Kit.

  • Measuring success: You'll the success and impact of Easel initiatives includes collecting, analysing, and reporting data to provide meaningful insights to the business.
  • Cross-team and cross-functional collaboration and discussion are vital functions of this role. Giving and receiving constructive feedback, supporting incoming queries about the system, and pairing with individuals.
  • A systems mindset:You'll help build a world-class design system in service of the Canva platform, contributing to user experience and business value. Improve designer and developer efficiency by updating or unifying existing component guidance and defining emerging ideas.
  • Systems-to-product alignment: You'll understand, question, and suggest the right components and patterns for the task so that designers across the business can create coherent, consistent, and delightful product experiences across Canva's platform.

Skills and Experience you'll have

  • UI Design: You'll have mastered the art and science of UI Design. You'll have experience contributing and evolving new componentry to the design system. 
  • Leadership: You have experience leading projects and processes autonomously with a high-level of complexity. You have experience running workshops to drive outcomes and alignment with not only the Design Systems team, but also teams and stakeholders across the business. 
  • Communication & Collaboration: You're able to engage stakeholders with clear and concise communication that aligns and influences teams and senior stakeholders across the business. You're able to facilitate and bring people together to cut through chaos. You're able to articulate, draft and publish clear guidance of a design system, in making informed decisions while being able to understand and speak “Front-End” when working with Engineers. You have experience sharing knowledge and advocating for a design system through articles, documentation and presentations.
  • Engineering Literacy: You have worked directly with engineers and have a strong engineering empathy. You seek to understand the underlying technical constraints of any system when designing.
  • Systems Thinking: You approach everything you do with systematic thinking. You have experience exploring and defining emerging patterns, evolving the design system through systems thinking
  • Problem-first Mindset: you approach the problem in an innovative way to drive clarity with your team and the wider business.
  • Interaction Design: You are able to use the appropriate prototyping tools to demonstrate how a particular flow or interaction will work for a specific part of the product.
  • Designing for the web: You always consider the realm of digital platforms and accessibility requirements to deliver components and patterns that consider all users’ needs, including accessibility, responsive design, web standards, common UI patterns, leading design innovations, and usability best practices.
  • UX Design: You'll have mastered the art and science of UX Design. You're able to pick out problems to focus and work on based on what will has the most impact for the business and users. The Problem spaces you have worked on are multi-layered and complex, that often contribute to high-priority business goals. 
  • Research: You are able to identify high-impact problems to solve, ensuring it is the right problem to solve. You are able to confidently validate that their designs are meeting the needs of users. You are able to proactively seek to identify key learnings from validating your designs and would incorporate this into your process or work in the future.
  • Data Fluency: You are able to identify ways to measure impact and go above and beyond the obvious measures of success. They think about success measures in a structured way, and approach it with an innovative mindset.
Working at Canva

Our culture is unlike anywhere else and we design your #CanvaLife experience to empower you to do the best work of your life.  

Whether you’re in the office, working from home or choosing your own adventure, our benefits for permanent Canvanauts include: 

Equity packages for you to truly be a part of the Canva journey. Hybrid work model (in-office & from home)
Flexible leave so you can recharge, give back, support others or focus on your own professional development.
Inclusive parental leave policy that supports all parents and carers throughout their parenting and caring journey.
An annual Vibe & Thrive allowance. This is for you to spend on whatever will support your wellbeing and development.. because you know what you need to Vibe and Thrive, better than anyone.
Virtual and in-office wellness benefits including Canva University, Employee Assistant Programs and Fitness & Meditation Classes.
Canva For Good program matching your not-for-profit donations, Force for Good leave (3 paid volunteering days) and a range of sustainability and ethical initiatives to get involved in.   

We make hiring decisions based on your experience, skills and passion. Please note that interviews are conducted virtually. When you apply, please tell us the pronouns you use and any reasonable adjustments you may need during the interview process.
Questions & answers for this position
  • What is the type of contract for this position?
    The contract for this position is a Full-time contract
  • What's the salary range for the Lead Product Designer - Design Systems position?
    The suggested salary for this position is $150,500-$229,000*
  • Is telecommuting possible for this position?
    No, telecommuting is not possible for this position
About Canva
Canva is an Australian graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content.
Website
Industry
Graphic Design, Photo Editing
Founded
2012
Size
1K-5K employees

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