Design System Specialist (Figma)

Renaissance AI · Remote · Contract with potential to convert to full-time

About us
At Renaissance AI, we build a simulation-based platform that helps enterprise teams in banking and regulated industries build real, measurable AI skills. Our methodology has been featured in Harvard Business Review. We're early stage, moving fast, and our product is growing quickly.

As we scale, we've hit a clear need: our product is built screen by screen, and we need a proper, scalable design system underneath it. That's where you come in.

The role
We're looking for a Design System Specialist who lives and breathes Figma architecture. Not a generalist product designer: a specialist who builds component libraries, design tokens, and scalable systems that engineering can build from without friction.
Right now, each new module is often redesigned from scratch, and the frontend rebuilds components each time. Your job is to fix that at the root: build one clean, well-structured, documented design system that becomes the single source of truth for the whole product.

This is a contract role to start. If you build the system fast and well, there's a clear path to convert into a permanent role maintaining and evolving it. How quickly that happens depends on you.

What you'll do

Build a scalable Figma design system from the ground up: components, variants, properties, and states
Define and implement design tokens (colour, typography, spacing, elevation) for consistency and theming
Architect everything with proper auto-layout so components are flexible and engineering-ready
Create clear documentation so designers and developers can use the system without a walkthrough
Establish naming conventions and structure that scale as the product grows
Work alongside our existing designer (strong on creative and visual design) and our frontend team, so the system maps cleanly to how components are built in code
Set up the foundations for design-to-development handoff

What we're looking for

Proven experience building design systems from scratch, not just using existing ones
Deep Figma expertise: advanced components, variants, properties, auto-layout, and library management
Deep expertise in native Figma Variables (Modes, Collections), with explicit experience mapping them to code tokens, so engineering can import design tokens via JSON in one click rather than re-entering values by hand
A systems thinker: you turn visual chaos into clean, reusable, logical structure
Experience working alongside frontend developers, and an understanding of how design systems map to code. Our frontend is built in React with Tailwind CSS, so understanding utility-first, grid-based styling is a strong plus: it makes handoff dramatically faster
Strong documentation discipline: your systems are usable by others, not just by you
Experience in product / SaaS environments, ideally complex or enterprise products
Able to work independently and fast: you can scope, build, and ship a system without heavy supervision

Nice to have: experience contributing to a component library that engineering consumes directly, and familiarity with design-to-code handoff at scale.

Why this role
A focused, high-impact mandate: you own the design system end to end
Your work immediately unblocks both design and frontend: the impact is visible and fast
A product featured in Harvard Business Review, in active growth
Flexible remote work
Contract to start, with a real path to a permanent role based on delivery

How to apply

Send your CV and a portfolio that shows design systems work specifically: component libraries, token structures, or systems you've architected. We care more about how you structure a system than how a single screen looks.

We may also ask you to look at a messy, unlinked screen from our product and show how you would break it down into clean, reusable master components. This is the actual work, and it's the best way for both of us to know if it's a fit.