Design Systems Lead

About the role

Imprint is building a platform that helps the world's best brands grow the lifetime value of their customers. We started with co-branded credit cards and rebuilt them to be smarter, more rewarding, and brand-first. We partner with companies like Crate & Barrel, Rakuten, Booking.com , H-E-B, Fetch, and Shell to launch modern credit programs that deepen loyalty, unlock savings, and drive growth. But the card is just the beginning. We combine advanced payments infrastructure, intelligent underwriting, and deep customer data to predict what each customer will do next and act on it, so brands can offer powerful financial products without becoming a bank. Co-branded cards alone account for over $300 billion in U.S. annual spend, and most still run on legacy bank rails. Imprint is the modern alternative: flexible, embeddable, and built for how people actually pay today. Backed by Kleiner Perkins, Thrive Capital, Ribbit, and Khosla Ventures, we're building a world-class team to redefine how people pay and how brands grow. If you want to move fast, solve hard problems, and own real outcomes, we want to meet you. We're looking for a Design Systems Lead to help shape how product experiences are designed and built across Imprint. This person will own the strategy, evolution, and execution of our design system while helping define what modern design systems look like in an AI-native product development environment. This is a highly strategic, highly leveraged role. You'll partner closely with Product Design, Engineering, Product Management, and AI teams to create systems that enable faster product development, higher quality experiences, and a more scalable design organization.

Responsibilities

• Own the Design System Strategy
• Define and drive the long-term vision for Imprint's design system
• Create and maintain a roadmap that balances immediate product needs with long-term platform investments
• Establish governance, contribution models, and decision-making frameworks
• Ensure the system evolves in response to both business needs and emerging technologies
• Lead and Develop the Team
• Mentor a small team of design systems designers and partner with developers
• Raise the bar on decision-making, prioritization, and systems thinking across the team
• Create clear ownership and accountability structures that increase efficiency
• Define success and report on progress, as well as any shifts on strategy
• Advocate for and educate on design systems across the org
• Drive Cross-Functional Execution
• Partner deeply with Product Design to understand customer and business needs
• Collaborate closely with Engineering to ensure system components are scalable, maintainable, and production-ready
• Align design and engineering roadmaps around shared priorities
• Serve as the primary point of contact for design system strategy and adoption
• Build for the Future
• Help define how AI transforms the way products are designed and built
• Explore new workflows that connect design systems, design tooling, code generation, and AI-assisted development
• Evolve our system beyond traditional Figma libraries and Storybook documentation toward machine-readable, AI-consumable foundations
• Evaluate emerging technologies and identify opportunities to increase leverage across the product development lifecycle
• Stay Hands-On
• Contribute directly to design system work as needed
• Review and improve component architecture, documentation, patterns, and guidelines
• Lead complex initiatives from strategy through execution

Requirements

• Required
• 8+ years of product design experience, including significant design systems ownership
• Experience leading or managing design systems teams
• Demonstrated success building and scaling systems used across multiple product teams
• Strong product judgment and ability to prioritize high-impact work
• Deep understanding of design systems, component architecture, tokens, accessibility, and design-to-development workflows
• Experience partnering closely with frontend engineers and engineering leadership
• Excellent communication skills and ability to influence across functions
• Experience with modern frontend technologies and component-based development
• Familiarity with Storybook, design tokens, and design system tooling
• Experience with AI-assisted design, code generation, or agent-driven workflows
• Background in design engineering or highly technical product environments
• Experience building systems in high-growth startup environments
• What Success Looks Like
• In your first 6 months:
• Our design system has a clear strategy, roadmap, and ownership model
• Product teams can move faster while maintaining quality and consistency
• Design and engineering are operating from a shared source of truth
• The design systems team is operating more independently and strategically
• We have a clear point of view on how AI should influence the future of design and development at Imprint

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