Principal Product Designer, Design Systems & AI

About the role

Anaconda's Design organization owns the design system end to end — from Figma libraries and design tokens through to the code components engineers ship. The team is mid-flight on a migration of the component architecture to a modern stack, converging two product surfaces into one platform, and defining how a design practice works in an agentic AI world. As Principal Product Designer, you will own the design system as a product: its architecture, governance, and evolution across converging surfaces. You will partner directly with engineering to land the migration, then build the AI-forward design practice on top of it: the patterns, tooling, and workflows for designing agentic product experiences. This is a senior individual-contributor role reporting to the VP of Design, operating with wide autonomy in a deliberately flat, senior team.

Responsibilities

• Own the design system end to end: design tokens, component libraries, documentation, and the code components engineers consume, across two converging product surfaces.
• Lead the migration of the component architecture to a modern stack (shadcn/ui, Storybook), partnering with engineering to re-baseline scope and ship a complete, production-quality tranche.
• Define the governance that outlives any individual: versioning, contribution model, release process, and explicit exit criteria for design handoff that both design and engineering sign.
• Establish Anaconda's AI-forward design practice: patterns, guidelines, and tooling for agentic product surfaces, and ship the first product experiences that use them.
• Work in design and code: prototype in the production stack and review component implementations.
• Raise the bar across a senior design team through influence: critique, pairing, and visible craft.
• Use AI-assisted tools, including Claude Code, reviewing and validating AI-generated output before it ships.

Impact will be measured through: completion and adoption of the component architecture migration across both product surfaces; reduction in design-to-engineering handoff time and rework, measured against explicit exit criteria; cross-team adoption of design system governance (versioned releases, contribution model, shared definition of done); and AI-forward design patterns shipped in production surfaces and reused across the platform.

Requirements

• 12+ years of product design experience, including several years owning a design system at scale — tokens, component architecture, and governance, not only consumption.
• Engineering fluency: comfortable working in TypeScript/React component codebases and Storybook, and applied in technical architecture discussions.
• Proven experience leading a design system migration or re-platform in a production environment, including scoping what ships and what parks.
• Demonstrated experience designing AI-driven or agentic product experiences.
• Experience using AI-assisted tools such as Claude Code as part of a professional workflow, including reviewing and validating AI-generated output before it ships.
• A track record of leading through influence in flat or ambiguous structures, defining the operating model rather than executing within one.

Preferred qualifications

• You've taken a design system through a framework migration at enterprise scale and can walk through what you kept, cut, and parked — and why.
• Contributions to open-source design systems or component libraries, with public work you can show.
• Experience designing for developer tools, data science, or technical audiences.
• You've built design tooling or automation — internal tools, Figma plugins, or AI-assisted design workflows — that other designers adopted.
• Experience working across converging or multi-product platforms where the design system was the connective tissue.
• A clear point of view on how AI is reshaping design practice, shaped by hands-on work designing agentic experiences.
• You embody Anaconda's values: "Curious by Default", "Build Together", "Own It", and "Lead with Guts and Heart", and behaviors: Clarity, Care and Candor.
• You care deeply about fostering an environment where people of all backgrounds and experiences can flourish.

Benefits

• Flexible vacation policy
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability
• Paid parental leave
• Monthly wellness stipend
• Employee assistance program and mental health resources
• Fully remote setup with flexible hours
• Culture that puts employees first, with genuine commitment to wellbeing and growth

Pay

Base salary range: $146,500 – $216,000, along with annual bonus potential and equity participation. Individual compensation is determined by work location, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

Schedule

Application deadline: November 2, 2026; applicants reviewed on an ongoing basis until the role is filled. Fully remote with flexible hours.