Lead Product Designer - Design Systems
Canva
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Sydney, NSW, Australia
Posted 6+ months ago
Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.
Hey, g'day, mabuhay, kia ora,你好, hallo, vítejte!
Thanks for stopping by. We know job hunting can be a little time consuming and you're probably keen to find out what's on offer, so we'll get straight to the point.
Where and how you can work
Our flagship campus is in Sydney. We also have a campus in Melbourne and co-working spaces in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. But you have choice in where and how you work. That means if you want to do your thing in the office (if you're near one), at home or a bit of both, it's up to you.
What you’d be doing in this role
As Canva scales change continues to be part of our DNA. But we like to think that's all part of the fun. So this will give you the flavour of the type of things you'll be working on when you start, but this will likely evolve.
The Team
Part of the Product Platform supergroup, the UX Platform’s group mission is ‘to ensure a delightful experience for every user on every device’. The group comprises teams that focus on systems, tooling and guidance for Canva’s Design System (Easel), Accessibility and Internationalisation, to name a few.
Our Design System focuses on two streams of work: the development and maintenance of foundational components and increasing adoption of the design system across the org. Our team’s mission is to build a world-class design system that empowers Canva staff to craft consistent and excellent experiences at scale.
Goals you'll achieve
- Audit: You'll audit the existing design system and make recommendations for improvements.
- Evolving components: You'll support our DS teams through component and pattern development, including design, drafting documentation, fixing bugs and refining existing assets and improving tooling.
- Leading advocacy model: You'll work directly with Product Designers in product teams to enhance cross-group visibility of emerging components and shared patterns, creating exposure to holistic systems problems, thinking and processes.
- 2026 roadmap: You'll utilise the knowledge and insights you've gained in the first six months to create and promote a long-term visual roadmap that outlines our vision and pinpoints current and future projects necessary to elevate our Design System to a world-class standard.
- Evolving docs site: In collaboration with the team, you'll lead and define a clear strategy to visually uplift the Easel documentation website to be more robust, easy to navigate and helpful in finding information that helps our consumers make great UI/UX decisions.
About the role you'll be doing
- Leadership: This is a lead individual contributor role, where you will lead and be accountable for projects, processes and craft mentorship without having any formal people management responsibilities
- Strategy and vision: own widespread design system changes and work closely with the Engineering Lead to define and articulate Easel's strategy and vision to key stakeholders and the broader team.
- Planning and delivery: guide prioritisation and decision-making on the health and evolution of the Easel Design System, collaborating with team members to identify and prioritise requirements for upcoming component delivery and establishing a clear path forward for future work.
- Advocacy and enablement: lead Product Designers and Front-End Engineers across product groups to identify, specify and prioritise holistic UI/UX patterns as reusable components across Canva's suite of products, enabling teams to ship quickly and consistently.
- Discover and define: actively explore components and patterns to contribute to the foundational core of our Design Systems component library.
- Supporting consumers: work with Product Designers and Front-End Engineers to answer and guide ad hoc questions and queries, enabling product teams to deliver world-class user interfaces that are usable, useful, and desirable for our users while ensuring our products align with our Design System.
- Maintain tooling: Scaling the Figma design library through new technological advancements, third-party integrations, optimisation, and general maintenance and support of the Easel Design Kit.
- Measuring success: measure the success and impact of Easel initiatives includes collecting, analysing, and reporting data to provide meaningful insights to the business.
- Cross-team and cross-functional collaboration and discussion are vital functions of this role. Giving and receiving constructive feedback, supporting incoming queries about the system, and pairing with individuals.
- A systems mindset: help build a world-class design system in service of the Canva platform, contributing to user experience and business value. Improve designer and developer efficiency by updating or unifying existing component guidance and defining emerging ideas.
- Systems-to-product alignment: understand, question, and suggest the right components and patterns for the task so that designers across the business can create coherent, consistent, and delightful product experiences across Canva's platform.
Skills and Experience you'll have
- UI Design: You've mastered the art and science of UI Design. You have experience contributing and evolving new componentry to the design system.
- Leadership: experience leading projects and processes autonomously with a high level of complexity. You have experience running workshops to drive outcomes and alignment with not only the Design Systems team, but also teams and stakeholders across the business.
- Communication & collaboration: You're able to engage stakeholders with clear and concise communication that aligns and influences teams and senior stakeholders across the business. You're able to facilitate and bring people together to cut through chaos. You're able to articulate, draft and publish clear guidance of a design system, in making informed decisions while being able to understand and speak “Front-End” when working with Engineers. You have experience sharing knowledge and advocating for a design system through articles, documentation and presentations.
- Engineering literacy: You have worked directly with engineers and have a strong engineering empathy. You seek to understand the underlying technical constraints of any system when designing.
- Systems thinking: You approach everything you do with systematic thinking. You have experience exploring and defining emerging patterns, evolving the design system through systems thinking
- Problem-first mindset: you approach the problem in an innovative way to drive clarity with your team and the wider business.
- Interaction design: You are able to use the appropriate prototyping tools to demonstrate how a particular flow or interaction will work for a specific part of the product.
- Designing for the web: You always consider the realm of digital platforms and accessibility requirements to deliver components and patterns that consider all users’ needs, including accessibility, responsive design, web standards, common UI patterns, leading design innovations, and usability best practices.
- UX design: mastered the art and science of UX Design. You're able to pick out problems to focus and work on based on what will has the most impact for the business and users. The Problem spaces you have worked on are multi-layered and complex, that often contribute to high-priority business goals.
- Research: You are able to identify high-impact problems to solve, ensuring it is the right problem to solve. You are able to confidently validate that their designs are meeting the needs of users. You are able to proactively seek to identify key learnings from validating your designs and would incorporate this into your process or work in the future.
- Data fluency: You are able to identify ways to measure impact and go above and beyond the obvious measures of success. They think about success measures in a structured way, and approach it with an innovative mindset.
What's in it for you?
Achieving our crazy big goals motivates us to work hard - and we do - but you'll experience lots of moments of magic, connectivity and fun woven throughout life at Canva, too. We also offer a stack of benefits to set you up for every success in and outside of work.
Here's a taste of what's on offer:
• Equity packages - we want our success to be yours too
• Inclusive parental leave policy that supports all parents & carers
• An annual Vibe & Thrive allowance to support your wellbeing, social connection, office setup & more
• Flexible leave options that empower you to be a force for good, take time to recharge and supports you personally
Check out lifeatcanva.com for more info.
Other stuff to know
We make hiring decisions based on your experience, skills and passion, as well as how you can enhance Canva and our culture. When you apply, please tell us the pronouns you use and any reasonable adjustments you may need during the interview process.
Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.
This job is no longer accepting applications
See open jobs at Canva.See open jobs similar to "Lead Product Designer - Design Systems" General Catalyst.