Sr. Manager, Design Systems

The Role

Our Design Foundations team is a key pillar of design excellence and execution at Addepar. The group works horizontally across all our multi-product platform to provide product development teams with UI standards, components, and documentation needed to build outstanding experiences for our global audience. They encourage cohesion across our product areas while also allowing for innovation and creativity to push our standards and systems forward. They have a mastery of our design tools and steward the many projects in flight by evangelizing consistent processes and structure.

We’re looking for an experienced design systems leader, familiar with the challenges of scaling systems across products, platforms, and teams. You are able to identify inconsistencies and inefficiencies in process, design improvements for them, and build the required relationships to get broad adoption of them in a complex organization. You’re an empathetic manager, aligning business needs with the skills and interests of your team, and guiding their careers.

Reporting to the Head of Design, you are the glue between many important, innovative teams, as you partner closely with design leadership and cross-functional teams to elevate, adapt, and unify our products.

What You’ll Do

• Develop and maintain a compelling vision and roadmap for the product design system, which aligns with the company's overall strategy and objectives.
• Evangelize outstanding UI and form consensus across teams on the value of investing in and adopting our design system.
• Partner with R&D teams to successfully implement and manage a new visual design across multiple products.
• Build a strategy for incorporating accessibility practices into our product development processes in partnership with design, engineering, product management, and QA.
• Collaborate with teams to ensure a streamlined user interface and seamless integration of design components.
• Incorporate user research and usability testing practices into component development to inform key decisions.
• Uncover design system adoption roadblocks and build solutions to remove them, helping development teams gain efficiencies.
• Evolve and manage the documentation website to create a single-source of truth for teams to gain knowledge on our standards.
• Communicate effectively at all levels of the organization, gathering feedback and managing expectations.
• Establish goal-driven metrics to measure the impact of the design system and continuously optimize its efficiency.
• Stay current on the latest digital design trends and new technologies, incorporating them into the design program as needed.
• Be responsible for and mentor a team of senior designers, fostering collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Actively contribute to evolving Addepar Design by partnering with your design leadership peers and contributing to operational duties that optimize our design practices.

Who You Are

• Bachelor's degree in human-centered interaction design or a related degree
• Minimum of 7 years of experience in user experience design with at least 3 years in a management role
• Proven track record of leading design systems programs and initiatives for enterprises or B2B organizations
• Solid technical understanding of user-interfaces and global accessibility standards
• Excellent project management and organizational skills, with the ability to adapt to changing project requirements and prioritize effectively
• Ability to thrive in a growth environment and understand how to scale design operations and best-practices
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with a demonstrated ability to collaborate with diverse teams and manage relationships
• Proficiency in Figma and other industry-leading design tools
• Knowledge of the latest design standard methodologies, with a passion for staying ahead of the curve