Design System Lead

Location: Vienna, VA, Pensacola, FL, or Winchester, VA (HYBRID)

Duration: Initial 6-month contract with possible extensions

Compensation: $40/hour - $45/hour

Work Requirements: US Citizen, GC Holders or Authorized to Work in the U.S.

Design System Lead

The Platform Design Systems Lead curates and advances the design-system experience for a specific product platform, ensuring that platform-level patterns, components, design tokens, documentation, and implementation guidance align with CMD+R and broader enterprise design-system direction. This role bridges design, engineering, product, accessibility, and leadership within the platform to keep experiences usable, scalable, accessible, and consistent.

This role does not own or lead the full enterprise design system. Instead, it operates as the platform-level design-system lead and partner to the hybrid enterprise design-system model, helping translate CMD+R standards into practical platform adoption, implementation, documentation, and governance practices.

The role requires enough front-end technical fluency to understand implementation feasibility, identify technical gaps, guide handoff practices, and collaborate effectively with engineering partners. While hands-on web development experience remains valuable, the primary emphasis is on platform leadership, CI/CD and release-process awareness, documentation, adoption, governance, and cross-functional enablement rather than day-to-day component coding.

Basic Purpose

The Platform Design Systems Lead is responsible for the strategic development, governance, and adoption of design-system practices for an assigned platform, ensuring platform-specific design tokens, components, patterns, and documentation stay aligned with CMD+R and related enterprise guidance. The role enables scalable, consistent, and accessible digital experiences across the platform by fostering shared patterns, reusable guidance, contribution discipline, and sustainable design-to-development workflows.

This role partners closely with designers, developers, product teams, accessibility stakeholders, enterprise design-system partners, and leadership to translate platform needs into practical technical and process improvements. The ideal candidate can recognize gaps in component implementation, token usage, documentation, release readiness, and CI/CD workflows, then collaborate with cross-functional partners to improve quality, consistency, and speed to delivery within the platform.

Key Responsibilities:

Platform Strategy & Leadership

• Define and evolve the platform design-system roadmap in alignment with product goals, platform priorities, accessibility expectations, and CMD+R enterprise guidance.
• Champion design-system adoption within the assigned platform, driving consistent use of approved patterns, tokens, components, documentation, and contribution practices.
• Represent platform needs, constraints, and feedback in design-system conversations, helping ensure CMD+R guidance can be translated into practical platform implementation.
• Provide leadership-level recommendations on platform design-system priorities, risks, technical gaps, adoption barriers, and opportunities to improve delivery workflows.

Collaboration & Governance

• Partner with platform design, engineering, product, accessibility, and enterprise design-system stakeholders to ensure platform solutions meet user, business, accessibility, and implementation needs.
• Maintain platform-level governance models, contribution workflows, intake practices, decision criteria, and scalable processes that complement CMD+R rather than duplicate or replace it.
• Facilitate conversations between designers, developers, and leadership to align expectations, clarify ownership, and improve end-to-end design-to-development handoff within the platform.
• Escalate cross-platform or enterprise-impacting questions to the appropriate CMD+R or enterprise design-system partners for alignment and decision support.

Technical Enablement & Engineering Partnership

• Apply working knowledge of front-end technologies to evaluate implementation feasibility, review platform design-system technical needs, and support effective collaboration with engineering partners.
• Partner with front-end engineers to ensure platform patterns, tokens, and components are implementable, accessible, performant, reusable, and aligned with CMD+R standards and platform realities.
• Support CI/CD and release-process improvements for platform design-system assets by collaborating on build, test, documentation, versioning, dependency management, and deployment workflows.
• Identify technical gaps in platform component libraries, token pipelines, documentation, and handoff practices; recommend practical improvements that support designers and engineers.
• Translate design-system patterns and tokens into platform implementation guidance, examples, or lightweight prototypes as needed, using modern front-end concepts without making hands-on feature development the primary focus of the role.

Documentation & Enablement

• Build and maintain platform documentation in tools such as Storybook and Zeroheight, ensuring guidance reflects CMD+R standards while addressing platform-specific implementation needs.
• Create training, workshops, office hours, and support materials to onboard platform teams, promote best practices, and improve consistent adoption across product areas.
• Document platform contribution models, component usage guidance, token application, accessibility expectations, and engineering handoff standards for both design and development audiences.
• Help teams understand when to use CMD+R guidance directly, when platform-specific guidance is needed, and when alignment with enterprise design-system partners is required.

Quality & Innovation

• Work cross-functionally to plan and conduct regular platform audits for design consistency, code alignment, accessibility conformance, documentation quality, and design-system adoption.
• Stay current with design-system, accessibility, documentation, delivery, and front-end ecosystem trends to continuously improve platform design-system functionality and usability.
• Use audit findings, adoption insights, and stakeholder feedback to prioritize improvements that reduce rework, improve implementation consistency, and strengthen platform design-system maturity.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in design systems, product design, design operations, front-end engineering, or a related digital product discipline.
• Proven track record of leading, governing, or significantly contributing to design-system adoption for a product area, platform, or large-scale digital experience.
• Working knowledge of front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern component frameworks or libraries such as React or Vue; ability to collaborate with engineers and evaluate technical feasibility is required, while deep hands-on coding is not the primary role expectation.
• Familiarity with design token management, theming systems, component-library architecture, and cross-platform implementation considerations.
• Understanding of CI/CD concepts relevant to design-system delivery, including build, test, release, versioning, documentation, dependency, and quality-check workflows.
• Ability to identify technical and process gaps, translate them into clear recommendations, and collaborate with designers, developers, product partners, accessibility stakeholders, enterprise design-system partners, and leadership to improve platform workflows.
• Strong understanding of design principles, UI/UX best practices, accessibility standards, and inclusive digital experience practices, including WCAG.
• Experience with design tools such as Figma and documentation platforms such as Storybook or Zeroheight.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, leadership, stakeholder management, and change-management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience partnering with front-end engineering teams on component-library workflows, design token pipelines, CI/CD practices, platform release governance, or documentation automation.
• Hands-on experience creating front-end prototypes, implementation examples, or component documentation using HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Vue, or similar technologies.
• Experience supporting a hybrid design-system model where enterprise guidance is adapted into platform-specific implementation and adoption practices.
• Experience with mobile or cross-platform design-system considerations, including React Native, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, or similar frameworks.
• Background in design operations, design tooling, documentation strategy, or platform-level design-system governance.
• Experience supporting accessibility audits, design-system quality reviews, adoption measurement, or contribution-model improvement.
• Contributions to open-source design systems, UI libraries, or reusable internal platform libraries.

Our benefits package includes:

• Comprehensive medical benefits
• Competitive pay
• 401(k) retirement plan
• …and much more!

About INSPYR Solutions

Technology is our focus and quality is our commitment. As a national expert in delivering flexible technology and talent solutions, we strategically align industry and technical expertise with our clients’ business objectives and cultural needs. Our solutions are tailored to each client and include a wide variety of professional services, project, and talent solutions. By always striving for excellence and focusing on the human aspect of our business, we work seamlessly with our talent and clients to match the right solutions to the right opportunities. Learn more about us at inspyrsolutions.com.

INSPYR Solutions provides Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, or any other protected status. INSPYR Solutions complies with all applicable laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. Applicants requiring reasonable accommodation during the application or interview process should contact [email protected] for assistance.

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