218K–307K USD / year
Staff/Principal Design Systems Lead
DesignRemote — United States
Published on 2026-10-22
These details were extracted automatically from the original listing. They may not be complete or fully up to date — it's worth checking the original job post.
About this role
Build Render’s design system from the ground up, combining exceptional visual and interaction design with hands-on technical implementation. Make the system usable by designers, engineers, and AI agents, then grow and lead the team responsible for it.
About the company
Render is a cloud platform for deploying web services, databases, and static sites with managed infrastructure. It targets developers who want production hosting without operating their own cloud stack.
The team
Product & Design Organization; reports to the Head of Design.
Stack
FigmaMCP
What you'll do
- Set the design system’s vision and direction, and build its foundations hands-on.
- Design and ship components, tokens, architecture, and guidance with engineering partners.
- Make system rules and documentation machine-readable and accessible to AI agents.
- Define quality standards and evaluations for AI-generated output.
- Improve visual design, interaction patterns, accessibility, and responsive behavior.
- Drive adoption across product teams and turn feedback into system improvements.
- Hire, develop, and lead the design systems team as the function grows.
What we're looking for
- Track record setting direction and delivering outcomes in design systems or design engineering.
- Exceptional visual and interaction design craft.
- Experience building systems that improve both team speed and shipped quality.
- Technical fluency with front-end architecture, component APIs, tokens, and theming.
- Ability to prototype and build in code and work through implementation tradeoffs with engineers.
- Hands-on AI experience and a clear point of view on AI-ready design systems.
- Strong product judgment and empathy for developers.
Nice to have
- Experience with developer tools, cloud platforms, or infrastructure products.
- Experience with machine-readable design-system documentation, MCP, headless architecture, or AI-output evaluations.
- Experience leading a design-system migration or company-wide change in how teams build.
- Experience evolving systems across platforms or connecting product and brand experiences.
- Founder or early-stage startup experience.
Benefits
- Four weeks of paid vacation.
- Fourteen weeks of fully paid parental leave.
- Equity.
- 100% employer-paid medical coverage and 99% employer-paid dental and vision coverage for the employee and a dependent.
- Monthly lifestyle stipend and cell phone and internet subsidy.
- Remote home-office stipend.
- 401(k), long-term disability, and life insurance.