Technical Design System Lead

Job Description

At T&F scale, design quality depends on the system designers work within. A well-governed design system enables consistency, accessibility, and speed; a neglected one creates technical debt and fragmentation. The Technical Design System Lead owns this infrastructure, treating it as a product with a roadmap, contribution model, and adoption strategy. Reporting to Head of Product Design, you'll define what enters the system, how it's built, documented, and used across design and engineering. This rare role requires genuine design sensibility, the ability to evaluate whether components, token architecture, and system decisions empower designers or constrain them. You'll ensure the system evolves alongside T&F's platform transformation.

Design System Strategy & Roadmap

You own the strategic direction of the design system, making active decisions about its content, priorities, and evolution not just responding to team requests.

• Define and maintain the design system roadmap, identifying gaps, deprecating outdated patterns, and sequencing improvements based on adoption data, design team needs, and product direction
• Establish a clear vision for the design system: its purpose, scope, and governing principles for growth
• Track and report on system health, adoption rates, component coverage, accessibility compliance, and the ratio of system-compliant to bespoke implementations
• Contribute to design strategy conversations, advising on how system capabilities enable or constrain product design direction
• Stay informed about T&F's evolving product portfolio to ensure new domains, interaction patterns, and platform capabilities are reflected in the system

Component Design & Token Architecture

You make the foundational decisions that every designer and engineer builds on.

• Design, build, and maintain a comprehensive library of reusable components covering all core interaction patterns, states, variants, and responsive behaviours
• Architect and govern design tokens, defining the semantic layer between raw values and component application to ensure intentional design decisions across all products
• Maintain Storybook (or equivalent) as the single source of truth for component documentation, behaviour, and usage guidelines
• Establish a versioning and deprecation model that allows system evolution without breaking existing implementations
• Ensure all components meet WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards as a baseline, building accessibility in at the component level

Design–Engineering Partnership

You invest in the relationships and processes that make system adoption the path of least resistance.

• Work closely with front-end engineering leads to ensure robust, well-tested code implementation integrated into engineering workflows
• Bridge the gap between design intent and engineering implementation, identifying precisely where Figma and React components diverge and why
• Collaborate with Product Designers to understand how the system is used in practice, where it helps, where it's worked around, and what that reveals about needed evolution
• Support engineering teams in system adoption through clear documentation, onboarding sessions, and responsive implementation support without creating bottlenecks

Accessibility & Quality Standards

You set and maintain accessibility as an engineering and design standard built into the system from the ground up.

• Own the accessibility standard, ensuring every component meets WCAG 2.2 AA compliance with documented accessibility guidance for implementation teams
• Work with the accessibility practice or external auditors to validate component-level accessibility and incorporate findings into the roadmap
• Build automated accessibility testing into the component development pipeline, preventing regressions and making compliance continuous
• Champion accessibility as a product quality standard throughout the design and engineering organisation

Documentation & Enablement

• Own design system documentation, ensuring it's comprehensive, accurate, current, and written for users, not builders
• Produce usage guidelines explaining when to use components, when not to, and how to compose them correctly in real product contexts
• Create onboarding materials and reference guides enabling new designers and engineers to become productive quickly and independently

Qualifications

• Significant experience in design systems, or a hybrid design-engineering role, with clear evidence of having built and scaled a design system in a large consumer-facing product organisation.
• Strong design sensibility a genuine eye for what makes a component well-conceived, a token architecture coherent, and a system trustworthy for the teams that depend on it.
• Production-grade front-end engineering capability you write clean, well-tested, accessible React (or equivalent framework) components and are comfortable working in a modern engineering codebase.
• Deep expertise in design tokens including semantic token architecture, theming, and the translation layer between Figma variables and code.
• Proficiency in Figma at an advanced level including component architecture, auto-layout, variables, and the maintenance of large-scale Figma libraries.
• Hands-on experience with Storybook or equivalent component documentation tooling.
• Experience designing and operating a contribution and governance model for a design system used by multiple teams.
• Strong communication skills you can explain a technical constraint to a designer and a design decision to an engineer, and you do both without condescension.
• A product mindset you think about the design system as a product with users, adoption metrics, and a roadmap, not as a library to be maintained.

Additional Information

At Taylor & Francis we care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. You will be joining a thriving business, working alongside an exceptional group of people. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about.

What we offer in return: 

• A competitive salary + bonus
• 24 days annual leave
• 4 volunteering days annually
• Day off for your birthday
• Pension contributions
• Medical insurance for self and dependants; life cover and personal accident cover for self
• Seasonal social and charitable events
• Training and development
• Tools and equipment for remote working

We believe that great things happen when people connect face-to-face. That's why we work in-person with each other, or with customers and partners, three days a week or more. When you’re not spending time together in one of our offices or other workplaces – like at conference – you get the flexibility and support to work from home or remotely.

The successful candidate will be able to utilise our balanced working model. We ask that candidates live within a commutable distance of our Bengaluru office,to ensure that as a balanced worker they can make it to our office locations to collaborate as required. There is an expectation for a minimum of 3 days per week in-person time.

You must have the right to work and live in India.

What you should know:

Closing Date: Applications will close on 9th July 2026.

Being Yourself at Taylor & Francis 

If you’re excited about working with Taylor & Francis to foster human progress through knowledge, we invite you to apply even if your existing skills and experience don’t fit every item listed above. At Taylor & Francis, we are at our best and most successful when colleagues can be themselves and contribute regardless of their identity or background. As a colleague, you will have the opportunity to further innovate and develop in areas that you are passionate about. Our goal is to empower you with the resources, incentives, and flexibility you need to enjoy success at work and to live a healthy, balanced life. 

Taylor & Francis is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe in and value diversity of people and thought, fostering a supportive and inclusive environment where all colleagues can learn and succeed as their true selves. Taylor & Francis recruits, develops, and retains colleagues without regard to any protected personal characteristics or other non-merit-based factor. 

If you have a disability, or face another barrier,  and would like to request an adjustment to assist your participation in the hiring process and/or in the advertised position, please contact [email protected]. Your request will be reviewed and considered in the strictest confidence.

We genuinely care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about. To find out more about our business and the great career opportunities please go to our Careers Site: http://www.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/careers

Or better yet check out our LinkedIn ‘Life’ Page, highlighting our accomplishments, employees, and company culture. It’s also a good way of meeting our recruitment team, who will be happy to advise you on your journey here at T&F. 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/taylor-&-francis-group/life/79e0c27c-afdf-4bbb-84e6-5f8ed5e10bb8/