Design Systems and Product Architecture Design Lead, Amplitude

• Proven experience leading design systems at scale, with a strong track record of rebuilding or evolving design systems in collaboration with engineering teams
• Deep expertise in systems thinking, usability, and accessibility, ensuring design solutions are scalable and performant
• Experience working across design and engineering, with an understanding of front-end frameworks, component libraries, and platform architecture
• Highly skilled in Figma, with experience managing design libraries, tokens, and documentation
• Ability to drive cross-functional collaboration, influencing design, engineering, and product teams to adopt systematized approaches
• Strong UX and UI design skills, with experience designing for complex enterprise applications
• A portfolio showcasing design systems work, including contributions to component libraries, interaction patterns, and scalable UI frameworks
• 8+ years of experience in some combination of cloud-native software development, platform engineering, site reliability engineering, and/or cloud infrastructure, with a more recent focus on Kubernetes and the cloud-native ecosystem
• Strong expertise in Kubernetes and related CNCF projects (e.g., Argo CD/Workflows, Backstage, Envoy, CoreDNS, and more) and in simplifying complex cloud infrastructure for broader teams
• Operational experience at scale with technologies like Kafka and Airflow
• Proficient in common infrastructure languages like Golang, Python, and Terraform, with experience developing and operating production systems
• Extensive experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, networking, and security
• Proven experience with monitoring and observability tools (Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana Cloud, etc.) and a strong understanding of system performance tuning
• Expertise in building abstractions over Kubernetes to simplify developer interaction with the platform
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across teams, build consensus, and drive initiatives in a high-pressure environment
• High level of empathy and patience, with a commitment to mentoring and helping others succeed, and the ability to incorporate feedback and turn it into actionable improvements
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and automation (Terraform, Helm, Kustomize, etc.), with a focus on reducing toil and operational overhead
• A mindset focused on improving the developer experience and business alignment, with the flexibility to make decisions that may go against ideal technical preferences when necessary

Desirable

• Amplitude is looking for a Design Systems and Product Architecture Design Lead to redefine and drive the vision, strategy, and implementation of our design system across desktop and mobile
• This is a unique opportunity to reestablish and evolve our design system with renewed alignment and commitment between design and engineering, ensuring a scalable, efficient, and high-quality user experience across our product suite
• As a key cross-functional partner, you will work closely with Product, Engineering, and Brand to build a cohesive UI component library, interaction patterns, and design guidelines
• This role goes beyond maintaining a system—you will play a pivotal role in shaping the product platform approach for Amplitude’s core analytics products, working alongside engineering to ensure design and system architecture evolve together to meet business and user needs
• This is an exciting opportunity for a design leader who thrives in systems thinking, collaboration, and innovation, and who is passionate about rebuilding and scaling a design system from the ground up
• Lead the rebuilding of Amplitude’s design system, creating a unified, scalable framework that aligns design and engineering for seamless implementation
• Establish Figma libraries, enabling teams to create consistent, reusable UI components that work cross-platform (Web, iOS, Android)
• Define design tokens, interaction patterns, and visual guidelines, ensuring consistency across Amplitude’s growing product suite
• Continuously audit and refine our UI to identify inconsistencies, propose solutions, and push the visual design system forward
• Strengthen Design & Engineering Collaboration
• Partner deeply with engineering leadership to align design and system architecture, ensuring the design system integrates efficiently into front-end development workflows
• Collaborate on building foundational product platform components that improve scalability, performance, and accessibility across Amplitude’s analytics products
• Work closely with product teams to embed design system thinking into their workflows, enabling faster, more consistent product development
• Advocate for best practices in componentization, ensuring UI components are robust, maintainable, and aligned with engineering standards
• Drive Accessibility & Inclusivity
• Develop accessible, inclusive UI components that adhere to WCAG standards, ensuring usability across a diverse range of users
• Establish color, type, and iconographic systems that balance brand expression with functional clarity across different devices and contexts
• Provide a framework for accessibility in both the design and development process, ensuring accessibility is a core part of Amplitude’s product experience
• Champion & Scale Design System Adoption
• Build a contribution model, enabling multiple product teams to contribute components while maintaining system integrity and governance
• Evangelize the design system across Amplitude, educating teams on best practices, adoption strategies, and system evolution
• Present the design system’s mission and roadmap to internal stakeholders, including designers, engineers, product managers, and leadership teams
• Lead documentation efforts, ensuring the design system remains accessible, well-maintained, and easy to use for all teams
• Mentor & Lead
• Provide design leadership and guidance, helping teams apply shared patterns while identifying opportunities for new patterns and components
• Foster a culture of collaboration, creativity, and continuous improvement within the design and engineering teams
• Inspire and mentor designers and engineers, guiding system adoption and design best practices across the organization