Product Design Manager, Design System

Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to a fair and just marketplace for all. We are seeking a Product Design Manager to own the design, evolution, and day-to-day advancement of our design system, ensuring quality, consistency, and scalability while collaborating with cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities:

• Design and deliver high-quality, reusable components, patterns, and interaction models that are scalable, accessible, and aligned with engineering constraints
• Define and evolve contribution guidelines and workflows to establish and manage a federated contribution model that enables teams to effectively contribute and scale the design system
• Set and uphold contribution standards and quality expectations for the design system, including reviewing and approving contributions from product teams
• Contribute to system architecture decisions in partnership with engineering
• Own prioritization decisions for the design system backlog and roadmap based on product needs, system gaps, and adoption goals
• Partner with project management to support intake, planning, and delivery of design system work
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Design to ensure system alignment with product needs, including alignment between design assets and coded components and informing component architecture, tokens, and implementation patterns
• Track adoption and identify gaps in system usage and coverage across product teams
• Contribute to product design initiatives as needed, applying and extending system components in real-world contexts
• Balance system integrity with pragmatic product delivery needs

Requirements:

• 5–8+ years of experience in product design, including hands-on experience building, launching and maintaining a design system
• Your portfolio demonstrates systems thinking and component-based design
• You've worked in lean or early-stage design system environments
• Your experience includes contributing to or establishing a federated or contribution-based system model
• You have a solid understanding of scalable design patterns, modular frameworks, and accessibility standards
• You can strike a balance between strategic system evolution and tactical product needs
• You have collaborated with engineering teams and have a familiarity with front-end implementation constraints
• You enjoy strong communication skills and are comfortable working in cross-functional environments