Instructional Designer

About the role

The Experience Systems Specialist protects the integrity of the Cient experience system by ensuring reusable templates, structured content, accessibility standards, and implementation quality remain aligned as the platform scales. This is not a generalist design role. It requires deep expertise in applying experience system standards to live .com templates and experiences, validating that accessibility requirements are correctly implemented in production, and serving as the connective tissue between experience design, front-end engineering, content, and the enterprise design system team.

Responsibilities

• Apply and validate accessibility standards across .com experiences
• Partner with the enterprise design system team to apply established WCAG 2.2 AA standards to .com-specific templates, components, and launch experiences
• Conduct pre-launch accessibility reviews on .com experiences to confirm experience system standards are correctly implemented in production
• Conduct accessibility annotations across templates, components, and interaction states — documenting how standards should be applied to reusable page models, not defining the standards themselves
• Identify and surface accessibility gaps to the design system team early in the design process — before they become build problems in the template
• Flag accessibility questions or ambiguities to the design system team; this role applies standards to the experience system, it does not set them
• Bridge template intent and technical output: Ensure template and interaction intent translate accurately to front-end implementation — closing the gap between what was designed and what shipped
• Partner with front-end engineering to communicate template requirements, interaction states, and edge cases
• Validate templates and implemented experiences against established experience system standards before launch
• Translate template and interaction requirements into system-ready specs that engineering can act on without ambiguity
• Protect and strengthen the .com experience system: Contribute to template architecture and component specifications within the client experience system — ensuring reusable page models are built for scale
• Stress-test templates against dynamic and edge-case content to ensure structure, accessibility, and consistency hold across the experience ecosystem
• Validate structured content against template requirements — ensuring authoring flexibility doesn't compromise template integrity
• Identify recurring inconsistencies in template application and surface them to the .com Experience Design Lead for system-level resolution
• Ensure templates, components, and tokens are consistently applied across the experience ecosystem
• Support content model and AI readiness: Partner with design and content teams to validate that structured content types are compatible with defined template patterns and reusable page models
• Contribute to authoring validation — ensuring that what authors can do in the CMS matches what the experience system is designed to support
• Help evaluate templates and content structures for AI-readiness, including generative content surfaces and GEO (generative engine optimization) considerations
• Flag where template flexibility could create structural inconsistency under AI-assisted publishing conditions
• Connect the experience system to the design system and engineering: Serve as the .com team's primary liaison to the enterprise design system and front-end engineering — translating .com template and experience requirements into the language the design system team can act on
• Ensure design system updates are correctly interpreted and applied across .com templates and reusable page models
• Translate template and experience requirements into design system contribution requests or new component specifications when .com needs are not yet covered
• Maintain awareness of design system updates and communicate implications for .com templates and patterns
• Escalate cross-system conflicts to the .com Experience Design Lead for resolution

Requirements

Experience & expertise: 4–6 years of experience in UX, product design, or design systems — with a strong focus on template systems, design QA, design-to-development handoff, or experience-level accessibility validation

Working knowledge of WCAG 2.2 AA standards and practical experience applying and reviewing accessibility in production template environments

Strong understanding of experience system architecture, reusable page models, component libraries, and token-based design — and how to apply them correctly at the experience level

Familiarity with structured content models and CMS-driven design — understanding how authoring constraints shape what templates can do

Experience working in cross-functional teams with engineering, product, and content partners

Skills & mindset

• Systems thinker — you see the pattern behind the problem, not just the problem itself
• Template-integrity minded — you understand that every one-off exception is a cost to the system, and you protect reusability without being rigid
• Clear communicator — you can translate technical requirements into design language, and template intent into engineering specs
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity — you know when to make a call and when to escalate
• Collaborative but opinionated — you bring a point of view and know how to advocate for quality without being precious about it

Tools

• Proficiency in Figma, including component libraries, auto-layout, and annotation workflows
• Familiarity with front-end HTML/CSS is a strong plus — you don't need to code, but you need to understand what you're handing off to
• Experience with accessibility testing tools (Axe, Colour Contrast Analyser, screen reader testing) preferred.