Render
Staff/Principal Design Systems Lead
$218K–$307K
Remote: United States · Remote · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 22, 2026
- Visa sponsorship
- Generally not eligible for new visa sponsorship; Render may, at its discretion, sponsor existing visa transfers with business authorization.
About the job
Build Render’s design system from the ground up, making high-quality product experiences reproducible by designers, engineers, and AI agents, then grow and lead the team that owns it.
What you'll do
- Set the system’s vision and architecture, and build its foundations hands-on, including components, guidance, and quality standards.
- Make the design system AI-ready through machine-readable documentation, agent-accessible rules and tokens, and evaluations of generated output.
- Partner with product and engineering teams, earn adoption, and build and lead the design systems team as the function grows.
What they ask for
- Track record setting direction and delivering outcomes in design systems or design engineering; able to build a function from the ground up.
- Exceptional visual and interaction design skills, with deep systems thinking and experience building systems other teams adopt.
- Strong technical fluency, including prototyping and coding, understanding front-end architecture, and working through implementation tradeoffs with engineers.
- Hands-on use of AI in work, a point of view on AI-ready design systems, and strong product judgment and developer empathy.
Nice to have
- Experience building developer tools, cloud platforms, or infrastructure products.
- Experience making design systems AI-ready, such as through machine-readable documentation, MCP, layered/headless architecture, or AI-output evaluations.
Pay
$218K – $307K USD base salary
Tools
Figma, MCP
AI focus
Make the design system legible to AI agents with machine-readable documentation, accessible rules and tokens, and an architecture that preserves brand and accessibility; evaluate AI-generated work for quality and compliance.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative