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Design Systems Lead

Perplexity·San Francisco, USA
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Perplexity is hiring a Design Systems Lead in San Francisco to bootstrap an intuitive semantic token system that supports design and product teams across multiple platforms and frameworks. The role is a true 50/50 design-engineer position: primarily working in GitHub owning the design system repo, while staying fluent in Figma so design and engineering never drift apart. The work spans mobile, web and React surfaces in partnership with product feature teams.

AI skillsThis role asks for AI & agentic skills, exactly what we teach at Into Design Systems

What you'll do

  • Bootstrap and own an intuitive semantic token system that works across multiple platforms and frameworks
  • Own the design system repo on GitHub as the source of truth for components, tokens and standards, including versioning, release management and a clear changelog
  • Set and uphold a high bar for visual design quality across every surface the system touches
  • Navigate the nuanced differences between mobile, web and React UI best practices and encode them into the system
  • Define and run the contribution model and governance, reviewing and shepherding inbound contributions from product feature teams
  • Keep design and engineering in sync, bridging Figma and code so the system stays coherent end-to-end
  • Own clear, first-class documentation and drive adoption across the org through onboarding, office hours and hands-on support
  • Bake in accessibility (WCAG) and theming, including dark mode, as defaults
  • Maintain a system roadmap balancing net-new work, migrations and deprecations against feature-team needs
  • Bring new AI tooling into the design systems workflow and help shape how the team builds systems in an AI-native way

What they're looking for

  • Extensive experience owning design systems at large organizations
  • A true 50/50 design-engineer, equally credible in visual craft and in code
  • An impeccable eye for visual design
  • Deep understanding of the nuanced differences between mobile, web and React UI best practices
  • Strong product sensibilities to evaluate and integrate contributions from product feature teams
  • Fluency in Figma, but primarily living in GitHub where you own the repo
  • Experience designing and maintaining semantic design tokens and scalable component APIs
  • A track record of driving adoption through excellent documentation and cross-functional partnership
  • Working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG) and how to build them into a system
  • Readiness to work with new AI tooling and genuine comfort with ambiguity

Summary written by Into Design Systems from the public job posting, without guarantee of accuracy or completeness. Always verify the details and apply on the company's official page.

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