Director of Design Technology

Who We Are Looking For

The Trade Desk is seeking an innovative Director of Design Technology to lead the technical design practice within our global UX Design organization. This is a senior leadership role responsible for shaping the tools, systems, AI capabilities, and engineering workflows that power how our design team creates and scales world-class product experiences.

What You Will Be Doing

• Shape & Advance the Design System
• Collaborate closely with the design system’s owners to influence token architecture, component governance, and versioning strategy
• Champion design-to-code pipelines that reduce friction between design and front-end development teams
• Lead AI Capabilities, Innovation & Tooling
• Evaluate, pilot, and implement AI tools across the design lifecycle — from ideation and wireframing to UI generation, copy assistance, and automated design QA
• Build and maintain an AI tooling roadmap that keeps the design team ahead of the curve on LLM-powered prototyping, layout generation, and intelligent design systems
• Develop internal frameworks and playbooks for responsible, effective AI use in design — balancing innovation with quality, consistency, and accessibility
• Identify opportunities to automate repetitive design and documentation tasks, freeing the team to focus on high-value creative and strategic work
• Stay current with the rapidly evolving AI tooling landscape — including Figma AI, Cursor, v0, and generative image and video tools — and make timely, evidence-based recommendations to leadership
• Drive Cross-Functional Influence
• Act as the primary liaison between Design, Engineering, and Product to ensure technical feasibility and design integrity across all initiatives
• Partner with engineering leadership to align on shared APIs, component standards, and documentation practices
• Evaluate the broader design tool ecosystem and make strategic recommendations on tooling investment and migration
• Represent the UX Design team’s technology perspective in planning cycles and roadmap discussions
• Position TTD as a company at the forefront of AI-enabled design practice
• Contribute to broader UX and design technology community conversations, open-source tooling, and innovation

What You Bring To The Table

• You are an experienced design technology leader with a proven track record of building the systems, tools, and AI-powered workflows that enable great design teams to do their best work.
• You possess a strong technical foundation, a genuine design sensibility, and the strategic thinking to connect tooling investment to real business and user outcomes.
• You are driven by craft, energized by emerging technology, and skilled at leading through influence in complex, cross-functional organizations.
• Bachelor’s degree in Design, Computer Science, Interaction Design, or a related field (Master’s preferred)
• 10+ years of experience in design technology, design engineering, or a closely related discipline
• 5+ years in a leadership or management role overseeing design technology or design systems teams
• Deep expertise in Figma — including variables, advanced components, Dev Mode, and Figma AI features
• Strong proficiency in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — able to read, write, and critique front-end code with confidence
• Proven track record building and scaling design systems across large, complex enterprise or platform-based products
• Demonstrated hands-on experience with AI tools in a design context — including generative UI, LLM-assisted workflows, and AI-powered prototyping
• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills with the ability to translate technical concepts for design audiences and design thinking for engineering teams
• Experience leading multi-disciplinary teams across design technology, prototyping, and front-end design
• Deep understanding of systems thinking and scalable design infrastructure
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive clarity in complex, fast-moving environments
• Working knowledge of machine learning concepts as they apply to UX — including intelligent defaults, predictive UI, and model-assisted design decisions (preferred)
• Experience in adtech, martech, or enterprise SaaS with complex data-dense interfaces (preferred)
• Contributions to open-source design tooling or published design system documentation (preferred)
• Portfolio demonstrating design system leadership, AI tooling strategy, and measurable impact on team productivity and product quality