Staff Product Designer, Design System

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Staff Product Designer, Design System
Company: Replit
Location: Foster City, California, United States
Job Type: FULL_TIME
Category: Product Design / Design Systems
Date Posted: January 17, 2026
Experience Level: 10+ Years
Remote Status: Hybrid

🚀 Role Summary

• Spearhead the end-to-end ownership and evolution of Replit's comprehensive design system, encompassing components, patterns, principles, and governance.
• Drive strategic initiatives to ensure the design system scales effectively across the product, robustly supports enterprise use cases, and directly enhances internal development velocity.
• Collaborate intimately with product designers, engineers, and design engineers to foster a cohesive design language and ensure consistent implementation across all surfaces.
• Define and refine the design system's roadmap, contributing to its long-term vision and strategic direction to meet evolving business and user needs.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role is positioned as a senior, high-leverage individual contributor with significant strategic influence over Replit's design infrastructure. The emphasis on "agentic software creation" and "enterprise adoption" suggests the design system must balance flexibility for customization with rigid consistency for scaled applications and customer-integrated solutions.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Lead the vision, strategic planning, and iterative roadmap development for Replit’s design system, ensuring alignment with company objectives and product evolution.
• Define, design, and evolve core design system elements, including components, interaction patterns, design tokens, and overarching interaction standards used across Replit's platform.
• Ensure the design system's architecture and componentry are inherently extensible to support a diverse range of surfaces, from core product UI to agentic flows, enterprise templates, and customer-specific design system integrations.
• Partner closely with product designers and engineering teams to embed system primitives into new feature development, ensuring adherence to established standards and promoting efficient implementation.
• Drive improvements in the discoverability, clarity, and usability of system-driven UI elements across key user touchpoints and entry points within the Replit ecosystem.
• Collaborate deeply with design engineers on technical implementation details, architectural trade-offs, and the overall system's technical foundation, influencing code-level decisions for consistency and adoption.
• Establish and refine clear governance models, including contribution workflows, rigorous review processes, and effective decision-making frameworks for managing system changes and updates.
• Act as the primary "domain owner" for the design system, providing expert guidance, design sign-off on system-level changes, and ensuring the system's integrity and scalability.
• Proactively identify and address design inconsistencies, redundancies, and fragmentation across the product, driving systematic improvements and elevating overall design quality.
• Balance the need for rapid product iteration and speed with a commitment to high craft standards, discerning when to apply strict design opinions and when to enable developer flexibility.
• Advocate for and promote system-level thinking and best practices across product, design, and engineering disciplines to foster a culture of cohesive design and development.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities highlight a dual focus on strategic ownership and detailed execution. The emphasis on "customer-integrated design systems" and "extensibility" indicates a need for advanced design system thinking beyond internal use, requiring a nuanced approach to theming, customization, and API design for external consumption.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: While no specific degree is mandated, a strong portfolio and demonstrable experience in design systems are paramount, often stemming from degrees in Design, HCI, Computer Science, or related fields.
Experience: 10+ years of comprehensive product design experience, with a significant and deep track record of owning and scaling a design system across multiple products or teams.

Required Skills:

• Systems Thinking: Exceptional ability to perceive patterns, abstractions, and long-term implications across complex design landscapes.
• Design System Ownership: Proven track record of leading the vision, strategy, and roadmap for a design system, including its governance and evolution.
• Component Library Expertise: Deep experience in designing, developing, and maintaining complex and scalable component libraries.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Demonstrated success in close collaboration with product designers, engineers, and design engineers, influencing technical implementation and API design.
• Strategic Acumen: Ability to operate effectively at both high-level strategic principles and detailed pixel- and interaction-level design decisions.
• Governance & Process: Experience establishing clear contribution models, review processes, and decision-making frameworks for design system changes.
• Pragmatism & Adaptability: Comfort navigating ambiguity, making pragmatic decisions, and balancing speed with quality.
• Communication & Influence: Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to influence without direct authority.

Preferred Skills:

• Developer-Focused Products: Experience working with products or tools specifically designed for developers.
• Design Tokens & Theming: Familiarity and practical experience with design tokens, advanced theming capabilities, and cross-platform system design.
• Design Engineering Partnership: A background in or strong, established partnership with design engineering teams.
• Extensibility Design: Experience designing systems that support custom stacks, enterprise variations, and customer-specific theming.
• Agile Methodologies: Proficiency in agile development environments and contributing to iterative product cycles.

📝 Enhancement Note: The requirement for "10+ years" and "deep ownership of a design system at scale" signifies a senior leadership role. The emphasis on collaborating with engineers and supporting enterprise use cases implies a need for candidates who understand the technical underpinnings of design systems and their role in B2B SaaS environments.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Design System Case Studies: Showcase at least one in-depth case study detailing your leadership and ownership of a design system, including its evolution, challenges, and impact. Focus on how you defined its strategy, components, and governance.
• Scalability & Extensibility Examples: Provide specific examples or case studies demonstrating how you designed components or patterns to be extensible, supporting multiple products, teams, or customer-specific variations.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration Evidence: Include examples of how you partnered with engineering and design engineering teams, illustrating your contributions to API design, implementation details, and system architecture.
• Impact Metrics & ROI: Quantify the impact of your design system work with relevant metrics, such as improvements in development velocity, reduction in UI inconsistencies, or enhanced product quality.

Process Documentation:

• System Governance Frameworks: Demonstrate your understanding of how to document and communicate design system governance, contribution models, and decision-making processes.
• Component Design & Documentation Standards: Present examples of well-documented components, including their usage guidelines, API definitions, and accessibility considerations.
• Design System Evolution Strategy: Articulate your approach to managing the lifecycle of a design system, including planning for updates, refactoring, and feature additions.

📝 Enhancement Note: For a Staff-level role focused on a design system, the portfolio is critical. It needs to demonstrate not just design execution but strategic thinking, system architecture, governance, and the ability to influence engineering and product teams. Quantifiable impact is key.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: The specified salary range is $220,000 to $260,000 USD per year.

Benefits:

• Competitive Salary & Equity
• 401(k) Program
• Comprehensive Health, Dental, Vision, and Life Insurance
• Short-Term and Long-Term Disability coverage
• Generous Paid Parental, Medical, and Caregiver Leave
• Commuter Benefits
• Monthly Wellness Stipend
• Autonomous Work Environment
• In-Office Setup Reimbursement
• Flexible Time Off (FTO) + Paid Holidays
• Quarterly Team Gatherings
• In-Office Amenities

Working Hours: The standard working hours are 40 hours per week, with an emphasis on an autonomous work environment that likely allows for flexibility within that structure.

📝 Enhancement Note: The provided salary range of $220,000 - $260,000 USD aligns with senior/staff-level product design roles in the competitive San Francisco Bay Area tech market, especially for specialized positions like Design System ownership. The extensive list of benefits is typical for a well-resourced tech company like Replit.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Technology, Software Development Tools, AI/Agentic Software Creation. Replit operates within the rapidly evolving SaaS and developer tools market, focusing on democratizing software development through its unique platform. Company Size: While not explicitly stated in the provided data, Replit is a growing tech company with a significant user base (millions of users, over 500,000 business users), indicating a mid-to-large-sized organization with established processes but still agile enough for rapid innovation. Founded: Replit was founded in 2016, giving it nearly a decade of experience in the market, allowing for the development of mature products and a refined company culture.

Team Structure:

• The Design System team likely consists of product designers, design engineers, and potentially UX researchers, working collaboratively.
• This role reports to a Design Lead or Head of Design, with close partnerships across Product Management and Engineering leadership.
• Cross-functional collaboration is a core tenet, with significant interaction expected with product teams building features and engineering teams implementing the system.

Methodology:

• Data-Driven Design: Emphasis on using data and user feedback to inform design system decisions and product improvements.
• Agile Development: Likely utilizes agile methodologies for rapid iteration, continuous integration, and deployment.
• Systematic Optimization: Focus on building infrastructure and processes (like the design system) that enable efficiency and scalability across the organization.

Company Website: http://replit.com

📝 Enhancement Note: Replit's mission to democratize software development suggests a culture that values accessibility, innovation, and user empowerment. The "agentic software creation" aspect points towards a forward-thinking, AI-driven approach. The company size and founding date imply a blend of established practices and a dynamic startup environment.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This role is at the "Staff" level, signifying a senior individual contributor position. It implies a high degree of autonomy, strategic influence, and expertise in a specialized area (Design Systems). Staff designers are expected to tackle complex, ambiguous problems, mentor others, and drive significant impact across multiple product areas or the entire platform. Reporting Structure: The Staff Product Designer for the Design System will likely report to a Design Manager, Director of Design, or Head of Product Design. They will work closely with Product Managers and Engineering Leads, collaborating on strategic initiatives and feature development. Operations Impact: The design system is positioned as a "core part of our enterprise value proposition" and a "foundation for how customers build with us." Therefore, this role has a direct and substantial impact on product quality, internal development velocity, enterprise adoption, and the overall scalability of Replit's platform. By ensuring consistency and efficiency, the design system directly contributes to user satisfaction and business growth.

Growth Opportunities:

• Design Leadership: Potential to grow into lead or principal design system roles, or transition into management if desired, by mentoring junior designers and influencing broader design strategy.
• Platform Strategy: Deeper involvement in platform-level thinking, influencing not just UI but the underlying architecture and tooling that enables product creation.
• Technical Expertise: Further development of expertise in design engineering, system architecture, and cross-platform design principles.
• Industry Influence: Opportunity to become a recognized voice in the design system community through contributions, talks, or publications.

📝 Enhancement Note: The "Staff" title, combined with owning the design system and its enterprise value, indicates a path toward senior individual contributor leadership. Growth here is less about managing people (unless chosen) and more about expanding scope, technical depth, and strategic influence within the organization and the broader product development ecosystem.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: Replit's Foster City office is likely a modern, collaborative workspace designed to foster innovation and teamwork. Given the "Hybrid" work arrangement, the office serves as a hub for in-person collaboration, team meetings, and focused work sessions. Office Location(s): Foster City, California, United States. This location is in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area, a major hub for technology companies, offering access to a rich talent pool and industry ecosystem.

Workspace Context:

• Collaborative Environment: Expect open spaces, meeting rooms, and common areas designed to encourage spontaneous interaction and knowledge sharing among design, engineering, and product teams.
• Tools and Technology: Access to high-end workstations, design software, and potentially specialized hardware or display setups to support detailed design work. The company likely provides necessary tools and resources for both in-office and remote work.
• Team Interaction: Opportunities for daily interaction with colleagues, participation in design critiques, brainstorming sessions, and cross-functional project discussions.

Work Schedule: A hybrid model implies a balance between in-office and remote work, with a standard 40-hour work week. The "Autonomous Work Environment" suggests flexibility in how and when work is accomplished, provided objectives are met. This structure is designed to accommodate deep work sessions required for design system development while maintaining team connectivity.

📝 Enhancement Note: The hybrid nature and autonomous environment suggest a workplace that values flexibility and individual productivity. The Foster City location places it within a competitive tech ecosystem, likely influencing the office design and amenities to attract and retain talent.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A recruiter or hiring manager will review your application and portfolio, focusing on relevant design system experience and seniority.
• Portfolio Presentation & Technical Deep Dive: Expect to present your design system case studies, discussing your strategic approach, technical considerations, collaboration with engineering, and the impact of your work. This is where you'll demonstrate your systems thinking and governance expertise.
• Cross-Functional Interviews: Interviews with Product Managers, Engineers, and potentially other senior designers to assess collaboration skills, problem-solving abilities, and cultural fit. These interviews will likely explore how you've navigated trade-offs and influenced decisions.
• Staff-Level Discussion: A final interview, potentially with a Design Director or VP, focusing on strategic vision, leadership potential, and how you envision evolving Replit's design system and contributing to the broader company mission.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Focus on Ownership: Clearly articulate your role and level of ownership for the design system projects you present. Highlight "I led," "I defined," "I owned."
• Showcase Systems Thinking: Emphasize your ability to see the bigger picture, identify patterns, and design for scalability and extensibility. Use diagrams or frameworks to illustrate your thought process.
• Quantify Impact: Whenever possible, use metrics to demonstrate the value and ROI of your design system work (e.g., reduced development time, consistency improvements, adoption rates).
• Detail Collaboration with Engineering: Provide concrete examples of how you partnered with engineers, discussed APIs, and navigated technical constraints.
• Explain Governance: Be prepared to discuss how you established contribution models, review processes, and decision-making frameworks for your design system.

Challenge Preparation:

• Design System Strategy Exercise: You might be asked to outline a strategy for a specific aspect of Replit's design system or propose improvements to its governance.
• Component Design Challenge: A task to design a new component or pattern that adheres to existing system principles while accommodating specific requirements (e.g., enterprise customization).
• System Consistency Audit: A hypothetical scenario where you identify and propose solutions for inconsistencies within a given UI.
• Collaboration Scenario: Discuss how you would handle a disagreement with an engineer or product manager regarding a design system decision.

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview process for a Staff-level role will be rigorous, focusing heavily on strategic thinking, leadership, and the ability to drive impact through systems. The portfolio is paramount, serving as the primary evidence of your capabilities. Be prepared to articulate your "why" and your vision for Replit's design system.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Design Software: Figma is the industry standard for collaborative design and is highly likely to be Replit's primary tool for UI design and prototyping.
• Design System Management: Tools like Storybook are essential for documenting, developing, and showcasing design system components in a live, interactive environment.
• Prototyping Tools: While Figma includes prototyping, dedicated tools might be used for more complex or high-fidelity prototypes.
• Collaboration Platforms: Slack for real-time communication, Jira or similar for task management and workflow tracking.

Analytics & Reporting:

• Product Analytics: Tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, or Google Analytics to track user behavior and feature adoption.
• Data Visualization: Tableau, Looker, or internal dashboards for reporting on system usage and impact.

CRM & Automation:

• CRM: While not directly a design tool, understanding how the design system integrates with CRM workflows (e.g., for enterprise clients) is valuable.
• Automation: Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and automated testing for design system components could be beneficial.

📝 Enhancement Note: Proficiency in Figma and a deep understanding of tools like Storybook are critical. Experience with design tokens and their implementation across various platforms (web, potentially mobile) is also highly relevant, especially given the mention of "cross-platform systems."

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• Empowerment & Accessibility: A core value is democratizing software creation, meaning the design system should empower users and developers of all skill levels.
• Iteration & Speed: Replit operates in a fast-paced environment; the design system must enable rapid development and iteration without compromising quality.
• Collaboration & Transparency: Working closely with engineering and product means valuing open communication, shared ownership, and collaborative problem-solving.
• Craftsmanship & Quality: A commitment to high-quality design and user experience, ensuring the design system contributes to a polished and reliable product.
• Systems Thinking: An emphasis on building scalable, maintainable, and efficient systems that benefit the entire organization and its users.

Collaboration Style:

• Partnership-Oriented: Expect close collaboration with product managers to understand requirements and engineers to ensure feasibility and implementability.
• Cross-Functional Integration: The role requires seamless integration with various teams, acting as a bridge between design intent and engineering execution.
• Feedback-Driven: A culture that encourages constructive feedback on designs, components, and processes to drive continuous improvement.

📝 Enhancement Note: Replit's "Operating Principles" are crucial here. Their blog post on this topic emphasizes pragmatic decision-making, long-term thinking, and a focus on impact. This suggests a culture that values initiative, thoughtful execution, and a results-oriented approach.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Balancing Consistency and Extensibility: Designing a system that is highly consistent for core functionality while also being flexible enough to support enterprise-level customization and customer-specific design systems is a significant challenge.
• Driving Adoption and Governance: Ensuring widespread adoption of the design system across diverse product teams and maintaining effective governance over its evolution requires strong influence and clear processes.
• Technical Debt Management: As the system grows, managing technical debt and refactoring components to stay current with best practices and evolving technologies will be ongoing.
• Cross-Platform Complexity: Supporting a wide range of surfaces (web, agent flows, potential future platforms) from a single system requires careful abstraction and robust tooling.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Deepening Design System Expertise: Opportunity to become a leading expert in design system strategy, architecture, and governance.
• Influence on Product Strategy: Contribute to the broader product and platform strategy by defining the foundational elements of Replit's user experience.
• Mentorship: Guide and mentor other designers and potentially design engineers on best practices for system design and implementation.
• Industry Visibility: Potential to contribute to the design system community through talks, articles, or open-source contributions.

📝 Enhancement Note: The primary challenge lies in the dual mandate of serving internal velocity and external enterprise value. Growth opportunities are heavily skewed towards expanding strategic influence and technical depth within the specialized domain of design systems.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "How would you define the vision and roadmap for Replit's design system over the next 1-2 years, considering our focus on agentic software creation and enterprise adoption?"
• "Describe your approach to balancing strict design consistency for core product features with the need for extensibility to support customer-integrated design systems."
• "What governance model would you propose for Replit's design system, and how would you ensure buy-in and adoption from product and engineering teams?"

Company & Culture Questions:

• "Based on your understanding of Replit, what do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges for our design system?"
• "How do you approach collaboration with engineering teams, especially when technical constraints impact design decisions?"
• "Describe a time you had to influence stakeholders to adopt a new design system principle or process. What was the outcome?"

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Structure Your Narrative: For each case study, clearly outline the problem, your role and responsibilities, the solutions you designed (focusing on system aspects), the collaboration involved, and the measurable impact.
• Highlight Systems Thinking: Use diagrams, flowcharts, or concise explanations to illustrate how your design decisions scale and connect across the product.
• Showcase Technical Understanding: Be prepared to discuss the technical implementation of your design system components, including APIs, tokens, and potential developer experience considerations.
• Focus on Governance and Process: Explain how you managed contributions, reviews, and decision-making, demonstrating your ability to operationalize the design system.

📝 Enhancement Note: Be ready to articulate your philosophy on design systems, how they drive business value, and how you collaborate to make them successful. Demonstrating strategic thinking and a pragmatic, impact-oriented approach will be key.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Staff Product Designer, Design System position:

• Submit your application through the provided link on Ashby.
• Portfolio Customization: Tailor your portfolio to prominently feature your most relevant design system experience, emphasizing leadership, strategy, and quantifiable impact. Prioritize case studies that demonstrate systems thinking, collaboration with engineering, and support for enterprise use cases.
• Resume Optimization: Ensure your resume clearly highlights your 10+ years of experience, with specific bullet points detailing your ownership of design systems, key achievements, and the tools/technologies you've mastered. Use keywords like "Design System," "Component Libraries," "Systems Thinking," "Governance," and "Cross-Functional Collaboration."
• Interview Preparation: Practice articulating your design system philosophy, preparing specific examples of challenges you've overcome, and rehearsing your portfolio presentation. Be ready to discuss Replit's mission and how a robust design system contributes to it.
• Company Research: Thoroughly research Replit's product, target audience (developers, businesses), and company culture. Pay close attention to their "Operating Principles" and any public information about their technology stack and design philosophy.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.

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