UX Designer - Design systems

Canonical is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives such as public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation and IoT. Our customers include the world's leading public cloud and silicon providers, and industry leaders in many sectors. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ colleagues in 75+ countries and very few office based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person, in interesting locations around the world, to align on strategy and execution.

The company is founder led, profitable and growing.

We are hiring a UX designer for our Design System Team. 

You will play a key role making open source software available to the world. Our Design function ensures the experience of the software and infrastructure we build is true to our intentions, and delivers the tools our community and customers need. The Design System UX designer makes that possible by defining, evolving and advocating for a consistent use of design system that scales across our products.

This role sits in the design system team reporting to Design Systems Management

Location: This role will be based remotely in the EMEA region.

The role entails

• Building and evolving Canonical’s design system, ensuring measurable adoption, consistency, scalability and accessibility across our products
• Collaborating with designers, engineers and stakeholders to translate user needs and brand principles into reusable components, patterns and guidelines
• Championing design system best practices, advocating for cohesive user experience and design, providing documentation and support for cross-functional teams

• Designing and documenting UI components, design tokens and interaction patterns
• Ensuring timely and efficient delivery of the roadmap
• Enabling alignment on design system usage and governance across teams
• Advocating for accessibility, performance, and scalability in design system decisions and iterating based on data and technological advancements
• Staying ahead of industry trends, ensuring innovation and balancing it with system coherence and performance

• Relevant experience in UX/product design, with a strong focus on design systems in complex environments
• A portfolio demonstrating strong expertise in design systems, including component libraries, documentation and handling complex environments
• Exceptional educational achievements in design or related behavioral science discipline
• Expertise in Figma, Storybook and design token workflows
• Experience of collaborating with engineers and bridging design and code
• Proven ability to apply design process and clearly communicate and document design decisions
• Excellent attention to detail and systemic approach to solving complex design challenges
• Commitment to transparent project delivery and owning team deadlines
• A passion for balancing consistency and innovation
• Willingness to travel up to 4 times a year for internal events

Read more about the design team

We consider geographical location, experience, and performance in shaping compensation worldwide. We revisit compensation annually (and more often for graduates and associates) to ensure we recognize outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus or commission. We provide all team members with additional benefits which reflect our values and ideals. We balance our programs to meet local needs and ensure fairness globally.

• Distributed work environment with twice-yearly team sprints in person
• Personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000 per year
• Annual compensation review
• Recognition rewards
• Annual holiday leave
• Maternity and paternity leave
• Team Member Assistance Program & Wellness Platform
• Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues
• Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long-haul company events

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm at the forefront of the global move to open source. As the company that publishes Ubuntu, one of the most important open-source projects and the platform for AI, IoT, and the cloud, we are changing the world of software. We recruit on a global basis and set a very high standard for people joining the company. We expect excellence; in order to succeed, we need to be the best at what we do. Most colleagues at Canonical have worked from home since our inception in 2004.​ Working here is a step into the future and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game.

We are proud to foster a workplace free from discrimination. Diversity of experience, perspectives, and background create a better work environment and better products. Whatever your identity, we will give your application fair consideration.

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