Staff Design Systems Designer

Role Overview

Ethos is hiring their first Design Systems Designer to build and evolve the design system powering both customer and internal experiences. This is a 0→1 opportunity to establish design system maturity while helping product teams move faster without slowing them down or over-engineering processes.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Foundations

• Establish the vision, principles, and roadmap for the design system, balancing scalability with near-term product needs
• Audit current system and product UI to identify high-leverage standardization opportunities and reduce inconsistency
• Define scalable token strategy (color, typography, spacing, elevation, motion) and approach to theming and brand expression

System Design & Craft

• Design, build, and maintain Figma libraries including components, styles/variables, templates, and patterns
• Create high-quality component specifications with clear interaction behavior, states, responsive guidance, and accessibility considerations
• Ensure system supports narrative and conversion-driven experiences (discovery flows, applications, underwriting, onboarding, policy management)

Engineering Partnership

• Partner with Design System and Front-End engineers to translate design system into reusable code components and tokens
• Define component APIs that work for product teams
• Align on workflows to keep design and code in sync (component lifecycle, versioning, release notes, deprecations)
• Drive pragmatic adoption starting where it matters most, shipping iteratively

Governance, Adoption & Enablement

• Build documentation and enablement materials for design system adoption
• Work cross-functionally with Product Design, Engineering, Brand/Creative, and Content Design

Requirements

Implied from role scope: strong experience in design systems, Figma expertise, understanding of accessibility standards, experience with component-based design, and ability to work collaboratively across design and engineering teams.