Sr. Product Designer II - Design Systems

Instacart is transforming the grocery industry and is seeking a Sr. Product Designer II to lead the evolution of their design system. This role involves partnering closely with engineering and design teams to ensure design-to-code fidelity and improve the usability and adoption of design components across multiple products.

Responsibilities:

• Own and drive the design system roadmap—prioritizing by product needs, system health, and adoption friction—while aligning stakeholders on a clear, forward-looking vision
• Define and evolve system UX: components, patterns, interaction states, responsive behavior, motion, and accessibility defaults that scale across products and platforms
• Lead token strategy end to end (primitive and semantic), including theming, density, and extensibility, and partner with engineering to maintain consistent component APIs
• Establish strong governance and lifecycle management: contribution standards, quality bars, review processes, versioning, deprecations, and clear migration plans to reduce system drift
• Create implementation-aware specs with edge cases, constraints, usage guidance, and acceptance criteria; collaborate in component-based workflows (e.g., Figma libraries, Storybook) to ensure design-to-code fidelity
• Build design enablement in context—linting rules, templates, and plugin experiences—supported by a structured knowledge model (rules, constraints, examples) that powers automation and AI-assisted support
• Use AI tools intentionally to streamline audits, consistency checks, migrations, and spec generation; contribute to AI-assisted workflows that help teams adopt changes safely
• Measure adoption and impact, identify workflow friction, and execute enablement programs that reduce rework, raise consistency, and accelerate safe system evolution

Requirements:

• 6+ years of experience in product design (or equivalent), including shipping and maintaining a design system adopted by multiple product teams
• Portfolio showcasing design systems mastery (components, patterns, tokens, governance) and cross-platform consistency; portfolio link required
• Technical fluency collaborating in component-based workflows (e.g., Figma component libraries and Storybook or equivalent) with a strong understanding of how implementation constraints shape UX
• Hands-on experience with token pipelines and tooling (e.g., CSS variables, semantic token architectures) and writing implementation-aware specs with acceptance criteria
• Proven accessibility competency applied to systems (e.g., WCAG 2.1 AA) with accessible defaults and patterns
• Demonstrated use of AI/automation to improve delivery speed and quality for design systems (e.g., audits, migration planning, consistency checks, spec generation)
• Experience driving system adoption through metrics, deprecation/migration programs, and cross-functional enablement
• Bachelor's degree in Design, HCI, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Experience with AI-assisted coding and design environments (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) and building Figma plugins or linting/guardrail tooling
• Track record implementing scalable theming, density, and semantic token strategies across multiple products or platforms
• Experience facilitating design sprints, co-creation workshops, or component governance reviews with cross-functional stakeholders
• Data fluency leveraging telemetry, adoption metrics, and experiments to inform system roadmap and deprecation strategies
• Familiarity with versioned monorepos or multi-package design system releases, including change management and migration planning