Design System Engineer, loveholidays
12 Month FTC
More information about location
3+ days a week in office (Hammersmith, London)
Holiday booking service
Posted today
Holiday booking service
201-500 employees
Posted today
More information about location
3+ days a week in office (Hammersmith, London)
201-500 employees
Company mission
Loveholiday's mission is to create the ultimate online travel experience.
Role
Who you are
- Proven experience building and evolving multi-platform design systems (Web, iOS, Android). You are an expert in React, TypeScript, and modern CSS, with a focus on token architecture and scalable component libraries
- You are a true systems thinker who understands versioning, governance, and adoption strategies. You can anticipate the downstream impact of architectural choices and drive cross-team consistency without relying on mandates
- A collaborative communicator with strong design sensibility. You don’t just translate specs; you contribute to visual and interaction decisions and are equally comfortable pairing with a designer on a spec as you are reviewing an engineer's PR
- You use usage analytics, adoption metrics, and research to guide decisions. You take pride in writing migration guides and documentation that are easy to consume, ensuring the system remains high-quality and "AI-ready" for coding assistants
- A deep commitment to web performance. You understand how design system choices impact Core Web Vitals at scale and are driven to ensure loveholidays remains the fastest travel platform in the industry
- You treat accessibility as a core requirement, not a "nice-to-have." You ensure that our component guardrails make it easy for every engineer to build inclusive experiences that open up travel to everyone
Desirable
- Knowledge and understanding of the travel sector or other D2C e-commerce environments
- Experience building design system foundations that supports multi-brand/white-label architecture and internationalisation at scale
What the job involves
- As Design System Engineer, you’ll play a pivotal role in elevating product quality and consistency across loveholidays’ customer-facing experience
- Working with design and tech leaders you'll own the evolution of our design system – bridging design intent and frontend implementation – while helping our teams move faster and ship more consistently, especially as AI-assisted development becomes central to how we build
- This is a rare opportunity to shape the visual and interactive foundation of a product used by millions of travellers, working at the intersection of design craft, frontend engineering, and developer experience
- Additional Info: This role is a 12-month FTC contract
- Operationalise the design system. Co-lead its evolution and governance, build and maintain a robust component library in React/TypeScript, and establish clear adoption standards across product teams – enabling the operational loop between Figma, code, and multi-brand delivery
- Help define how our design system supports AI-generated frontend code (Claude Code, Cursor and similar tooling), reducing rework and improving consistency of AI output, whilst enabling innovation and experimentation at scale
- Bridge design and engineering, working closely with product designers and engineers to translate design decisions into reusable, production-ready components
- Review design system features before release to ensure they meet high UX and consistency standards; make targeted visual and interaction refinements aligned with design system guidelines
- Improve developer experience by partnering with engineers to make the system intuitive to use, well-documented, and a genuine accelerant
- Collaborate with design leadership, product managers, and engineering to ensure the system reflects evolving product priorities
Application process
- TA screening - 30 mins
- 1st stage interview with the Hiring Manager - 45 mins
- Tech challenge - you can choose between a live and take home option
- Final stage - consisting of discussions around three key areas
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Travel, both domestic and overseas, has been a huge part of the British economy since the late 20th century. In 2019, UK residents spent £43 billion on foreign holidays - almost double the amount spent a decade before.
Despite travel companies suffering considerable reputation damage back in 2020, as they struggled to refund customers whose booked holidays were suddenly cancelled, the appeal of companies like loveholidays to holidaymakers will undoubtedly endure seeing as they make the process of booking holidays much easier.
In the nearest future, loveholidays will need to focus on maintaining its reputation, especially given the wide array of direct competitors who could steal market share. At present, however, loveholidays is still one of the fastest growing online travel agents. If it can keep up the practices which have brought it success over the past 10 years, loveholidays is still in a good position to keep its growth strong for few years to come.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Oct 2016
$4.1m
EARLY VC
May 2011
$2.7m
EARLY VC
Total funding: $6.8m
Company benefits
- Discounted holidays for you, your family and friends
- 25 days of annual leave + bank holidays
- Company pension contributions at 5%
- Individual training budget for courses, seminars and memberships to professional bodies
- High degree of autonomy in a strong collaborative environment
- Cycle to work scheme, season ticket loan and eye care vouchers
- Hybrid working with 3 days working in our office (London) and 2 days WFH per week
- Sustainably sourced fruit baskets in the office kitchen
- Increased annual leave for long service
- Ability to buy and sell annual leave
- Enhanced maternity pay = 6 weeks of full pay and 20 weeks at 50% pay
- Enhanced paternity pay = 4 weeks of full pay
Company values
- We are entrepreneurs - We’re proudly commercial, we do more with less, we own the decisions we make and the actions we take
- Everything is written in pencil - As we grow, we think smaller, act quicker and continuously evolve the way we organise our work
- We organise for speed - A flat structure with small teams, allows us to move quickly
- We believe in Team - We’re all in it together
Company HQ
Hammersmith, London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Jonny Marsh
(Non Executive Director)An engineering graduate from the University of Bath, Jonny is also the founder and ex-CEO of nmqa Ltd and co-founder of travelmatch. He served as Loveholiday's COO until 2019.
Alex Francis
(Non Executive Director)Founded travelmatch in 2007 and then loveholidays in 2012, quickly becoming the fastest growing business in the UK by 2019. Now acting as a non-exec for the business since stepping down as CEO in 2020.
People progressing
Joined as UX/Design Manager in 2011, promoted 3 times in 10 years to current position of Lead User Researcher, having previously worked as Senior Product Designer.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at loveholidays
Clodagh Beatty (Head of Talent Management, Learning & DE&I)
- We recently hired a Head of L&D, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion to support us in our ongoing commitments to creating an inclusive environment, as well as providing growth opportunities for all our employees
- We want all applicants to feel they can belong at loveholidays
- We have employees from all walks of life and we are only interested in assessing your skills, attitude and talent!
- We support Employee Resource Groups - recently launched our Women's Network at loveholidays
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