Lead Product Designer, Design System

Job Description

We are looking for a Lead Product Designer to help grow our Design System initiative. The Design System team will focus on enhancing our customer-facing products by improving how designers collaborate through the standardization of practices, tools, and communications. This team will enable a more effective, more scalable design team through the creation and maintenance of a design system. You are an experienced product designer who is able to make deliberate design decisions and translate any given user-experience journey into a smooth and intuitive interaction. You are up to date with current mobile, tablet and web design trends (including implementation practices) and realize that product design is a fluid field that requires constant adaptation and change.

What’s the job?

• Work with Product, Creative, Engineering, Program Management to deliver scalable design standards, a design system for customer-facing UI, and design tools and automations enabling a leaner, more agile product development cycle.
• Will help scale the design tools, design practices and processes, and help transform static designs into dynamic, accessible, and polished digital product.
• Will collaborate closely with Product Designers and business partners to evolve and evangelize the way we design at Rakuten, to rapidly prototype solutions, and to maintain the quality of design as it transitions to native app, web or mobile or our browser extension.
• Implement efficient UX/UI processes that help the Product Design team achieve their best possible work as they partner with Product Managers and Engineers.
• Establish and socialize agreed-upon design specifications and standards to ensure that designs are completed on time and adhere to that standard.
• Maintain the design system as a single source-of-truth, living style guide, ultimately giving clients a more polished, consistent experience and freeing up designers and engineers to spend more time in their areas of expertise, effectively doing higher quality design work with fewer resources.
• Provide guidance and offer mentorship to others in the company.

What is expected of me?

• You are a seasoned Product Designer with a minimum 8 years of experience working on a like team.
• 5+ years of experience in interaction and visual design.
• Have a holistic understanding of product design, including visual design, experience design, and business acumen.
• You have a background in design and development, such that you know how static designs can become digital product and can communicate the process succinctly across domains.
• You love to collaborate directly in design/development pairing sessions and in workshop sessions.
• You have experience managing multiple projects and are able to prioritize effectively based on the needs of the business.
• You get excited to both mentor others and to learn from others in order to constantly improve Product Design at Rakuten Rewards.
• You know the Product Design process well and can apply UX methodologies to help identify the right problems to solve and to help prioritize the ways we solve them.
• You know what makes UI great: the beauty, the simplicity, the interaction, the code.
• You understand and appreciate the value of modular design.
• Strong proficiency with design and prototyping software, e.g. Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Figma, InVision, After Effects, Principle, Framer X, Zeplin and Zeroheight.
• Understanding of basic front-end languages. You know the constraints of developing for multiple devices and how to create a unified experience across them.
• Excellent communication in speaking and writing, an engaging presentation style, and strong visual storytelling. You have a strong understanding of the HCD process; how to lead it and teach others.
• A strong portfolio across multiple devices and platforms that highlight your approach to problem solving, as well as the solutions themselves. Case studies should demonstrate your skills in research, user experience, visual design, and interaction design.
• Design experience within an ecommerce or marketplace is preferred with a mobile first mentality.