Ethos is hiring its first Principal Design Systems Designer to build the foundations for on-brand, accessible, high-quality UI. The role sits at the intersection of Product Design, Engineering, Brand/Creative and AI tooling, owning a 0→1 design system built in an AI-native way.
What you'll do
- Audit current product UI and design artifacts to find standardisation opportunities
- Define the system's information architecture: naming, taxonomy, component hierarchy, documentation structure
- Create a step-by-step prioritisation plan with design, engineering and leadership
- Define and ship a scalable token strategy synced across Figma, code and Storybook
- Partner with front-end engineers to build reusable components with clear APIs and accessibility
- Own the component lifecycle: versioning, release notes, deprecations, handoffs
- Build a lightweight, builder-friendly contribution process for designers, engineers and PMs
- Create machine- and human-readable documentation, guidelines and decision records
- Drive pragmatic adoption by shipping iteratively and building credibility
- Define how AI agents audit, tag and maintain the system, and where human review gates belong
- Shape the pipeline from Figma or a prompt through Cursor/Claude Code into Storybook-validated components
- Make components, tokens and patterns legible so agents produce shippable output
- Define success metrics: adoption, UI consistency, cycle time, accessibility, AI output quality
- Partner with Research and Data to connect system changes to product outcomes
What we're looking for
- Has owned a design system end-to-end at a product company, including adoption
- Deep fluency with design-to-code integration: tokens, component APIs, versioning
- Track record of driving adoption through pragmatic, builder-friendly processes
- Strong working knowledge of modern front-end concepts and collaboration with engineers
- Experience setting accessibility standards and shipping accessible components
- Hands-on experience with AI-assisted design and development workflows like Cursor or Claude Code
- Sets direction for peers and partner teams on ambiguous tradeoffs
- Ability to thrive in ambiguity and build structure where none exists
- Clear communicator who aligns stakeholders and influences without formal authority
Good to know
- Full-time position
- Remote work