Twinkl is hiring a Principal Product Designer to own the direction of its design system, spanning customer-facing and B2B products across web and mobile. Sitting in the digital product team, this hands-on individual contributor role defines, builds and governs the system while driving adoption across design and engineering.
What you'll do
- Define design system scope, principles and governance model, including review, versioning and deprecation
- Design and ship system components, modules, templates and the token layer hands-on
- Drive adoption by working with engineering, running contribution forums and writing guidance
- Build WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility into components so it's inherited by default
- Partner with UXR and customer insights to turn user behaviour into system patterns
- Define and track measures such as adoption, parity, drift and time saved
- Take end-to-end ownership of high-stakes journeys to prove new patterns before they enter the system
- Mentor designers and engineers on using and extending the system well
What we're looking for
- 3+ years defining, setting and governing a design system
- 5+ years hands-on delivery of design system components, modules and templates in production
- 8+ years product design experience across web and apps
- Design tokens and theming experience, keeping design library and code in step
- Figma proficiency including variables, component properties and library management
- Front-end code fluency to work credibly with engineers
- Practical experience using AI tools such as Claude in design work
- Strong portfolio showing systems built, governance model and adoption achieved
- Excellent communication and presentation skills
- Experience implementing accessibility standards including WCAG 2.2
Nice to have
- Understanding of the EdTech landscape, gamification and emerging technologies such as AI
Good to know
- Permanent contract
- Core hours 10am-2pm Monday to Friday