Principal Experience Designer - Visual Design & Design Systems

About the Role

Our client, a leading enterprise SaaS company, is hiring a Principal Experience Designer to lead the visual direction of its enterprise design system. The system powers the components, patterns, templates, accessibility standards, and shared experiences used across the company’s B2B platform.

This is a dual-focus principal role:

• 60–70% Design System Visual Leadership: Evolve the design system’s visual language, shape its token architecture, and create the reference designs and guidance that help teams build consistently.
• 30–40% High-Visibility Visual Work: Lead visual design for major conferences, marketing partnerships, and executive audiences. This work is part of the wider design ecosystem the system supports.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the design system’s visual language across typography, color, spacing, iconography, motion, and brand expression
• Partner with the components and patterns/templates sub-teams to keep visual design consistent and intentional across every asset
• Work with product design, product management, and engineering so experience decisions carry through faithfully from system to production
• Maintain a scalable, semantic token architecture that supports consistent experiences across products over time
• Build and maintain a library of full-screen reference designs showing how the system applies in real product experiences
• Own visual usage guidance and documentation covering intended use, constraints, and quality standards for designers, engineers, and AI-assisted workflows
• Set up ongoing evaluation of AI-generated designs and prototypes, and use the findings to strengthen tokens, examples, and guidance before inconsistencies reach product teams
• Lead visual design for high-stakes moments, including conferences, executive presentations, product vision work, and marketing partnerships
• Coach designers and influence cross-functional partners through clear feedback, principles, and visual storytelling

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in product design, visual design, UX, or a related field, including significant work on platform or enterprise products
• Bachelor’s degree in Design, HCI, or a related field (or a Master’s degree with 8 years of experience, or a PhD with 6 years of experience)

Preferred Qualifications

• Portfolio showing exceptional visual craft and the ability to turn a visual point of view into scalable product systems
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted design or prototyping workflows, with a clear view of their opportunities and limits
• Experience defining or evolving a design system’s visual language, including tokens, components, patterns, and documentation
• Ability to create compelling product narratives for senior leaders and high-visibility audiences
• Close partnership with engineers, balancing design intent, system health, and implementation
• Track record of influencing and coaching teams without formal authority
• Experience building reference sites, design-system documentation, or machine-readable design guidance
• Experience with semantic or multi-tier token systems, motion design, presentation design, or event experiences
• Background in front-end development, developer tools, cross-platform systems, or highly regulated industries