Product Designer - HashiCorp Design System

Introduction

A career in IBM Software means you'll be part of a team that transforms our customer's challenges into industry-leading solutions. We are an infinitely curious team, always seeking new possibilities, and dedicated to creating the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions. Our renowned legacy creates endless global opportunities for our network of IBMers. We are a team of deep product experts, ensuring exceptional client experiences, with a focus on delivery, excellence, and obsession over customer outcomes. This position involves contributing to HashiCorp's offerings, now part of IBM, which empower organizations to automate and secure multi-cloud and hybrid environments. You will join a team managing the lifecycle of infrastructure and security, enhancing IBM's cloud solutions to ensure enterprises achieve efficiency, security, and scalability in their cloud journey.

Your role and responsibilities

About the organization

The Front-end Experiences organization, which supports HashiCorp products, exists to enable the delivery of accessible, high-quality UIs through a focus on design systems, tooling, infrastructure, education, and culture. The organization is responsible for Helios, HashiCorp’s Design System, our accessibility program, the long-term reliability and stability of our UIs, and serves as a center of excellence, supporting all designers and front-end engineers.

About the role

As a Senior Designer, you will join a distributed team of passionate designers and engineers who design, build, and govern the Helios Design System, where you’ll primarily focus on designer enablement.

We are looking for an experienced systems thinker to drive the crucial work of migrating Helios to align with the Carbon Design System. Your success will be measured by your ability to support others in navigating this complex transition while continuing to promote consistency across our products.

What you’ll do (responsibilities)

This role requires a balance of strategic thinking, hands-on design, and cross-functional collaboration, with a strong emphasis on system evolution and adoption.

Design System Ownership & Governance :

Own the end-to-end design lifecycle for high-quality, enterprise-grade components and patterns in Figma.

Proactively identify opportunities for system improvement based on cross-product needs and industry best practices.

Champion accessibility and inclusive design as a core value, establishing the patterns and governance necessary to ensure system-wide conformance.

Carbon Migration :

Support the design mapping, technical preparation, and adoption support for migration from the Helios Design System to the Carbon Design System.

Collaborate directly with HashiCorp product designers and liaise with the Carbon team.

Product Team Enablement & Adoption :

Draft and facilitate adoption playbooks to guide product teams in moving to new Carbon-aligned components and patterns.

Facilitate educational workshops and office hours to support widespread adoption.

Required technical and professional expertise

Expert in Figma : Mastery of Figma features related to design system maintenance, component architecture, and shared library management.

Design System Experience : Proven track record of working on, or contributing to, a large-scale, enterprise-level Design System.

Deep Systems Thinking : Proven ability to manage complexity, define clear component APIs (design and code), and understand the ripple effect of design changes across a multi-product ecosystem.

Accessibility Expertise : Strong, actionable knowledge of WCAG standards and proven experience designing systems to ensure accessibility conformance.

Collaboration & Communication : Exceptional communication skills with the ability to articulate complex design decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Attention to Detail : Meticulous approach to defining specifications and ensuring pixel-perfect execution.

Preferred technical and professional experience

Experience with the IBM Carbon Design System or previous experience leading or participating in a major Design System migration / re-platforming initiative.

Familiarity with front-end code (HTML, CSS, Ember, React) to facilitate smooth collaboration with engineering partners.

Ability to build plugins and tools using the Figma API.

Experience working with remote-first or highly distributed teams. Given our organization is largely distributed, we are looking for team members who perform well, given a high level of independence and autonomy.

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.