Senior Product Designer, Design Systems

Hi, we're DuckDuckGo, the online protection company and remote-first team of 300+ on a mission to raise the standard of trust online. Founded in 2008 and profitable since 2014, annual revenue now exceeds $100m USD, serving millions of users across Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android platforms with our search engine and subscription services. We also offer private, useful, and optional AI, including Duck.ai, which lets you chat privately with ChatGPT, Claude, and other AIs.

Your Team and Role

As a Senior Product Designer, Design Systems, you'll be the first of its kind at DuckDuckGo. You'll take ownership of our design system at a pivotal moment, defining both a role and a roadmap from the ground up. You'll audit our existing system, lead projects that move it forward across platforms and products like Duck.ai and Search, and shape how we manage and scale it as we grow.

Applying your hands-on design skills, you will autonomously lead highly impactful projects that scale across millions of users, collaborating with team members at all levels to pioneer new solutions for the privacy layer of the internet. From ideation to execution, you'll assess vague problems, propose high-impact solutions, and execute them against success criteria. You'll have a voice in all product-related design decisions and work on a team dedicated to our ethical, privacy-by-design approach.

About You

• Experience: 7+ years in product or design systems roles, including 2+ years in senior-level design positions at significant global consumer brands.
• Demonstrable track record of building and scaling complex and established systems.
• Ability to lead the future of our design system, from audit, recommending solutions, and planning rollouts via quick wins or large-scale projects.
• Ability to communicate recommendations and prioritization with clear documentation, success metrics, resources, and rationale for stakeholders, designers, and engineers.
• Knack for balancing structure with scale by creating frameworks (tokens, libraries) that hold up across platforms and teams without sacrificing craft.
• Deep knowledge of design tools, such as Figma, key to evolving and maintaining the design system.
• Experience bridging design and engineering practices, including creating shared nomenclature and workflows.
• Accustomed to applying agentic and AI-driven solutions into design system management and maintenance workflows.
• Enjoy pushing creative limits while solving challenging design problems and delivering on delight, craft, and exceptional quality.
• Ability to communicate visual and interaction recommendations with high-quality mockups, prototypes, and rationale.
• Skills to manage ambiguity and propose innovative solutions with a focus on metrics.
• Ability to take initiative in generating ideas and carrying them forward with urgency and discretion, while working openly and collaboratively.