Senior Design Systems & UI Designer

About the Role

This is a rare opportunity to own and shape the design system for one of Canada’s top fintech companies. As Senior Design Systems & UI Designer, you’ll play a pivotal role in building and maintaining KOHO’s design system across web, mobile, and marketing experiences, ensuring pixel-perfect execution, usability, and scalability.

This is more than a systems role—you’ll craft high-impact UI, refine KOHO’s design language, and work at the intersection of brand and product design. You’ll define governance, component architecture, and adoption strategies, partnering with product designers, engineers, and brand teams to ensure consistency, performance, and accessibility across all platforms.

If you're passionate about designing scalable systems that drive real impact, thrive at the intersection of systems thinking and UI craft, and want to build something foundational for millions of users, this is the role for you.

This role reports to the Director of Design (Brand) and collaborates closely with Product Design, Engineering, and Marketing teams.

What You’ll Do

Design System Ownership

• Own the creation, refinement, and expansion of KOHO’s design system across web, mobile, and marketing experiences.
• Establish and maintain scalable UI components, patterns, design tokens, typography, color systems, and grids that ensure a cohesive user experience.
• Define component properties, states, and interactions to ensure flexibility, usability, and cross-platform consistency.
• Continuously audit and refine system components to meet evolving business and user needs.
• Define and implement governance models, including contribution frameworks, to ensure consistency, maintainability, and efficient scaling of the design system.

Visual and Systems-Level Craft

• Apply high standards of UI and interaction design to create polished, intuitive, and functional experiences.
• Ensure that design consistency, usability, and accessibility are at the core of all system updates.
• Ensure full parity between design and development, working closely with engineers to align design components with front-end implementation. Regularly audit the live product to identify and resolve inconsistencies.
• Advocate for best practices in responsive design, accessibility (WCAG), and inclusive design principles.
• Work closely with engineers to define implementation standards, review builds, and ensure pixel-perfect execution of UI components across web and mobile.
• Establish best practices for handoff, component behavior, and versioning to ensure consistency and maintainability as the design system evolves.

Collaboration, Documentation, and Team Communication

• Partner with brand designers, product designers, engineers, and marketing to ensure the design system supports both product and marketing needs, reinforcing brand consistency across all digital experiences
• Develop clear and comprehensive documentation, including guidelines, component specs, and usage best practices to enable teams to scale design efficiently.
• Manage updates to the design system Figma libraries, ensuring consistency across files and teams. Communicate changes through release notes and system updates to keep product designers, brand designers, and engineers aligned.
• Create design tokens and frameworks that help bridge the gap between design and development, ensuring a scalable, high-quality implementation.
• Provide regular updates to product designers, brand designers, and engineers on design system changes, adoption, and upcoming improvements.
• Establish feedback loops to collect input from designers and developers, refining the system based on team needs and real-world usage.

Measuring Impact and Driving Adoption

• Perform regular health checks on the design system, ensuring both design and development implementations remain in sync. Identify inconsistencies, usability issues, and areas for optimization.
• Define key metrics to track design system adoption, usability, and efficiency across teams.
• Collaborate with leadership to set OKRs and success criteria for the design system’s evolution.
• Analyze component usage, compliance rates, and areas for improvement, ensuring the system remains relevant and widely adopted.
• Facilitate training sessions and onboarding materials to help designers and engineers effectively use and contribute to the system.

What You’ll Bring

• 6+ years of experience in visual/UI design, with a strong emphasis on building and maintaining design systems.
• Deep knowledge of design systems principles, component architecture, and scalability across digital platforms.
• Expertise in Figma, including design libraries, component properties, variables, and documentation.
• Strong visual design skills, including typography, color, layout, and interaction design.
• Experience working across both brand and product design, ensuring a seamless visual identity across digital experiences.
• Understanding of accessibility best practices and how to create inclusive, user-friendly components.
• Ability to collaborate cross-functionally and advocate for design system adoption across teams.
• Ability to advocate for design systems adoption, communicate across disciplines, and align stakeholders around scalable design solutions.

Nice to Have

• Experience contributing to or leading a rebrand and post-rebrand design system work.
• Familiarity with front-end development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to better collaborate with engineers.
• Understanding of motion design principles and how they can be applied to enhance a design system.