About the Role
In this position, you will lead the enterprise Design Studio as a scalable design function, integrating people leadership, DesignOps, Figma and Design Language System (DLS) governance, production-grade AI design, and maintaining strong executive stakeholder influence.
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Key Responsibilities
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Team Leadership
- Lead and develop a large multidisciplinary team across UX, UI, Product Design, Design Systems, and DesignOps.
- Assess current team skills, seniority, and capacity; maintain a skills matrix and close gaps through hiring and upskilling.
- Allocate designers by project need, complexity, and capacity, and build the next layer of design leadership.
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DesignOps & Scaled Design Process
- Define a scalable design lifecycle from intake to UX, UI, Design QA, developer handoff, and release.
- Set clear gates, Definition of Done, and SLAs for projects, BAU requests, audits, and change requests.
- Manage demand, capacity, and priorities, and track KPIs such as turnaround time, rework, DLS adoption, and stakeholder satisfaction.
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Figma Enterprise & DLS Governance
- Own the structure and governance of a complex Figma Enterprise environment: including teams, projects, libraries, access, and file lifecycle.
- Ensure approved designs are clearly separated from working, experimental, and archived files.
- Own the Design Language System as a product: managing contributions, versioning, release, and alignment with coded components.
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AI-Enabled Design
- Move AI beyond proof of concepts into governed, repeatable production workflows across research, UX, UI, DLS documentation, Design QA, and design-to-code.
- Define approved tools, reusable workflows, and human review points, compliant with enterprise security and the DLS.
- Measure AI’s impact on productivity, cycle time, quality, and consistency.
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Presentation, Storytelling & Stakeholder Management
- Act as the representative voice of the Design Studio with senior leadership, business, technology teams, and vendors.
- Transform complex design and AI topics into clear business narratives, including problem definition, user need, rationale, impact, and recommendations.
- Influence decisions, align competing priorities, and constructively challenge requirements.
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Cross-Team & External Design Governance
- Establish a federated model ensuring that internal, project, and vendor design teams adhere to common standards.
- Conduct onboarding, design reviews, and audits for work produced outside the Studio to prevent parallel design systems.
Requirements
- Proven corporate/large-enterprise experience in complex organizational structures, governance processes, and senior stakeholder environments.
- 12+ years in UX/UI, Product, or Experience Design, including 5+ years leading multidisciplinary design teams.
- Experience leading a large or distributed design organization and establishing a DesignOps operating model.
- Strong hands-on expertise with Figma Enterprise (libraries, variables, permissions, Dev Mode, and governance).
- Proven experience building or governing an enterprise-scale design system/DLS.
- Practical experience running AI-assisted design workflows in production, not just proof of concepts.
- Strong design-to-development collaboration skills with engineering teams.
- Exceptional executive presentation, storytelling, and stakeholder management abilities.
Leadership Profile
- Design Leader: Provides credible direction across UX, UI, and product design.
- People Leader: Effectively builds and grows a large multidisciplinary team.
- DesignOps Leader: Integrates people, processes, Figma, and DLS into one cohesive operating model.
- AI Design Leader: Incorporates AI into daily delivery while demonstrating measurable value.
- Storyteller & Influencer: Simplifies complex problems and secures senior alignment.
What Success Looks Like
- Clearly defined roles, processes, and standards, with work allocated by capability and capacity.
- A structured, governed, and scalable Figma environment, coupled with a widely adopted DLS.
- Internal and external design teams collaborating under common standards.
- AI embedded within day-to-day design delivery, delivering measurable results.
- The Design Studio recognized by senior stakeholders as a strategic capability.
