Ethos
Principal Design Systems Designer
Remote US · Principal · Full-time
Sponsorship not specified$165k-$292kDetected 9 days ago
Agentic AIFigmaDesign SystemsAccessibilityResearchLeadershipCommunication
About the role
- Define the information architecture of the system itself - naming, taxonomy, component hierarchy, and documentation structure - so that both humans and AI agents can find, reason about, and correctly apply the right primitives.
- Define and ship a scalable token strategy (color, typography, spacing, elevation, motion) with a pipeline that keeps Figma variables, code tokens, and Storybook in sync.
- Shape the pipeline that takes a Figma frame or a PM's prompt through Cursor / Claude Code into Storybook-validated components, including the review checkpoints that keep quality, accessibility, and brand integrity intact.
Responsibilities
- Audit the current product UI and existing design artifacts; identify the highest-leverage opportunities to standardize, consolidate, and reduce inconsistency.
- Create a concrete step-by-step plan by partnering with design, engineering, and leadership, to correctly prioritize pieces of this effort, balancing long-term scalability with near-term product needs.
- Partner with Front-End engineers to translate the system into reusable, well-architected components with clear APIs, states, and accessibility built in.
- Own the component lifecycle end-to-end: versioning, release notes, deprecations, and handoffs.
- Build a lightweight, builder-friendly contribution process - designers, engineers, and PMs should be able to propose, review, and add to the system without a heavy governance tax.
- Create documentation that people (and agents) actually use: guidelines, do/don't examples, usage rationale, and decision records, structured so they're machine-readable as well as human-readable.
- Drive pragmatic adoption: start where it matters most, ship iteratively, and build credibility through visible product impact.
- Define how AI agents help audit, tag, and maintain the system's structure - and where human review gates belong (naming decisions, deprecations, new pattern introductions).
- Ensure components, tokens, and patterns are documented, named, and structured so that when a designer or PM prompts an agent to "build the post-intent screen," the agent reaches for the right primitives and produces something shippable - not something that needs to be rebuilt.
- Define what success looks like and track meaningful signals: adoption, UI consistency, design/dev cycle time, accessibility improvements, and the quality of AI-generated output against the system.
Requirements
- Strong working knowledge of modern front-end concepts (tokens, components, states, responsive behavior) and comfort collaborating closely with engineers on tradeoffs.
- Genuine curiosity and hands-on experience with AI-assisted design and development workflows - you've used tools like Cursor, Claude Code, or equivalent, and have a point of view on where humans need to stay in the loop.
Skills
- Track record of driving adoption through pragmatic, builder-friendly processes rather than heavyweight governance.
- Clear communicator who can align diverse stakeholders and influence without formal authority.
- #LI-Remote #LI-CM1
- The US national base salary range for this full-time position is $165,000 - $292,000.
Compensation
- The US national base salary range for this full-time position is $165,000 - $292,000.
Benefits
- Ethos is a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale.
- With its robust three-sided technology platform, Ethos is transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers alike.
- Ethos is redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten.
This listing is sourced directly from Ethos's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.