Design System Lead

About the role

Design System Lead – Location: Pensacola, FL; Vienna, VA; Winchester, VA; or San Diego, CA (Hybrid). Alternate Location: Remote (U.S.). The Platform Design Systems Lead is responsible for the strategic development, governance, and adoption of design-system practices for an assigned platform. This role ensures platform-specific design tokens, components, patterns, and documentation stay aligned with enterprise guidance. The position enables scalable, consistent, and accessible digital experiences by fostering shared patterns, reusable guidance, and sustainable design-to-development workflows. Everforth Apex is a world-class IT services company that serves thousands of clients across the globe. When you join Everforth Apex, you become part of a team that values innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning. We offer quality career resources, training, certifications, development opportunities, and a comprehensive benefits package. Our commitment to excellence is reflected in many awards, including ClearlyRateds Best of Staffing® in Talent Satisfaction in the United States and Great Place to Work® in the United Kingdom and Mexico.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the platform design-system roadmap in alignment with product goals and platform priorities.
• Champion design-system adoption within the assigned platform, driving consistent use of approved patterns, tokens, and components.
• Represent platform needs, constraints, and feedback in design-system conversations.
• Partner with platform design, engineering, product, and accessibility stakeholders to ensure solutions meet user and business needs.
• Maintain platform-level governance models, contribution workflows, and scalable processes.
• Facilitate conversations between designers, developers, and leadership to align expectations and improve handoff processes.
• Apply working knowledge of front-end technologies to evaluate implementation feasibility and support collaboration with engineering partners.
• Build and maintain platform documentation in tools such as Storybook and Zeroheight.
• Work cross-functionally to plan and conduct regular platform audits for design consistency, code alignment, and accessibility conformance.

Requirements

Experience: 10+ years of experience in design systems, product design, design operations, front-end engineering, or a related digital product discipline. A proven track record of leading, governing, or contributing to design-system adoption for a product area or large-scale digital experience is necessary.

Technical Skills: Working knowledge of front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern component frameworks like React or Vue is required. Familiarity with design token management, theming systems, and component-library architecture is also needed. An understanding of CI/CD concepts relevant to design-system delivery, including build, test, release, and versioning workflows is important. Experience with design tools such as Figma and documentation platforms like Storybook or Zeroheight is required.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience partnering with front-end engineering teams on component-library workflows or design token pipelines.
• Hands-on experience creating front-end prototypes or implementation examples.
• Experience supporting a hybrid design-system model where enterprise guidance is adapted into platform-specific practices.
• Experience with mobile or cross-platform design-system considerations, including React Native or SwiftUI.
• Background in design operations, design tooling, or platform-level design-system governance.
• Experience supporting accessibility audits or design-system quality reviews.
• Contributions to open-source design systems or UI libraries.

Skills

Working