At Constant Contact, we are seriously awesome people who take ownership and make an impact by operating with the mindset, integrity and courage of a small business owner. There’s something so profoundly rewarding about knowing that your work is empowering people everywhere to pursue their dreams. Here, we all play an integral part in helping business owners, entrepreneurs, non-profits and individuals to succeed by giving them all the help and tools they need to grow online. We’re energized by new challenges and new possibilities-and we’re just getting started!
We empower millions of small businesses to grow their brand and succeed through powerful digital marketing tools. Our Design System is the engine that drives a cohesive, intuitive, and accessible experience across all our product lines (Email Marketing, Websites, Social, and CRM). Join us in scaling our design practice and enabling thousands of developers and designers to build products faster and more consistently.
The Director, Design System & Foundations is a highly strategic leadership role, serving as the connective tissue between design, product, and engineering. You will own the long-term vision and strategic roadmap for our unified system, ensuring it is built on mobile-first principles and drives measurable efficiency across the entire organization. You will manage a cross-functional team and act as the primary governance leader, translating high-level design strategy into scalable operational practices that define the future look and feel of Constant Contact's product suite.
What You'll Do:
- Strategy & Roadmap Ownership: Define and champion the long-term strategic vision and prioritized roadmap for the Design System, integrating mobile-first design principles and future-forward design strategy into all major initiatives.
- Experience Standards & Governance:
- Define and govern the core standards for the Constant Contact product experience, ensuring alignment across UX, visual design, branding, and content strategy with a mobile-first approach.
- Collaborate closely with the Brand team to translate corporate identity guidelines into scalable, reusable patterns and tokens within the product experience.
- Partner with the content strategist to define and integrate foundational rules for product voice, tone, and messaging consistency into the system's guidelines.
- People & Team Leadership: Manage, mentor, and grow the dedicated team responsible for system components and foundations, with a specific focus on Visual Designers, UX Designers, and Content Strategists. Foster a culture of systems thinking, craft excellence, and cross-discipline collaboration within the team.
- Quality & Accessibility: Own the quality of system output, enforcing best practices, ensuring all components adhere to WCAG AA accessibility standards, and driving visual and technical consistency across all platforms.
- Cross-Functional Partnership: Act as the primary liaison between Product Leadership, Design Leadership, and Engineering/Platform teams, driving system adoption metrics and ensuring the correct translation of design standards into code.
- Process Improvement: Drive continuous improvement in our design-to-code workflow, tooling, and release process to maximize team velocity and reduce design debt.
What You'll Bring:
- Experience & Leadership: 5+ years of professional experience in Product Design, UX Engineering, or Design Systems, with 2+ years in a people management or dedicated systems leadership role for a mature product organization.
- Creative Foundation Expertise: Proven experience defining and scaling foundational standards for product experiences, specifically encompassing Visual Design principles, Brand consistency, and UX Content Strategy (e.g., voice and tone guidelines).
- Design Tool Mastery: Expert proficiency in modern design tools (Figma is essential), including building, structuring, and maintaining scalable component libraries, component variants, and design tokens that serve as the single source of truth.
- Technical Fluency: Strong familiarity with front-end development technologies (HTML, CSS/SASS, JavaScript) and the lifecycle of components built using a modern framework (e.g., React). The ability to effectively collaborate with and guide engineers on implementation best practices is critical.
- Quality & Accessibility: Deep, practical understanding of web accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1+ AA) and demonstrated experience embedding inclusive design practices into the component lifecycle and team workflow.
- Strategic & Systems Thinking: A proven ability to operate as a strategic systems’ thinker who can balance long-term platform health, architectural needs, and immediate product delivery requirements.
- Communication & Influence: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of successfully influencing cross-functional leaders (Product, Engineering, Marketing) and presenting complex system strategies to both technical and non-technical audiences.
The specific salary offered to a candidate may be influenced by a variety of factors including the candidate’s experience, their education and work location. In addition, some roles may be eligible for additional on target commission pay or bonus. The compensation package includes health and welfare benefits including paid leave.
Why You’ll Love Us:
- We celebrate one another’s differences. We are proud of our culture of diversity and inclusion, and we're always working hard to strengthen and improve this culture. We have programs in place that bring us together on important issues and provide educational opportunities for all employees.
- Join the experts. If you're passionate about supporting businesses and organizations, you won’t find a better spot to share your talent. We’re dedicated to improving the quality of our product from a customer standpoint and have a true desire to enable the success of businesses, non-profit organizations, and community groups.
- You’ll have opportunities to grow your career. We encourage and support our team members to learn different aspects of the business, take on stretch assignments, seek coaching opportunities and professional development opportunities.
- A generous paid time off policy and a competitive benefits package that supports the health and well-being of you and your family
At Constant Contact, we’re all about work flexibility and are proud to serve our customers as a hybrid workforce. Our hybrid work model combines the convenience of remote work with access to our great office locations to collaborate in-person, participate in live trainings, and socialize with colleagues.
Application Deadline: 30 days. We may fill this job opening prior to the deadline if a candidate is selected by us.
Vision6 Pty Limited is an affiliate of Constant Contact, Inc. and a part of the Constant Contact group of brands.
Constant Contact is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, veteran status or any other status protected under applicable law. If you require accessibility assistance applying for open positions, please contact [email protected].
The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor’s legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)
It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.
Notice to Recruiters and Staffing Agencies:
Constant Contact has an internal talent acquisition department and designated career site for individuals looking to join our team. Constant Contact will not accept unsolicited resumes from any external recruiters, staffing firms, search agencies or any fee-based referrals. Any unsolicited resumes sent to directly to Constant Contact, in any capacity will be considered property of Constant Contact. Constant Contact will not pay a fee for any placement resulting from the receipt of an unsolicited resume.
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