Remote Surface Pattern Design Jobs in Washington, DC

Platform Design Systems Analyst

100% Remote

Rate is Negotiable

Curates and advances the design-system experience for a specific product platform, ensuring that platform-level patterns, components, design tokens, documentation, and implementation guidance align with CMD+R and broader enterprise design-system direction.

This role bridges design, engineering, product, accessibility, and leadership within the platform to keep experiences usable, scalable, accessible, and consistent. 

Operates as the platform-level design-system lead and partner to the hybrid enterprise design-system model, helping translate CMD+R standards into practical platform adoption, implementation, documentation, and governance practices. 

The role requires enough front-end technical fluency to understand implementation feasibility, identify technical gaps, guide handoff practices, and collaborate effectively with engineering partners. While hands-on web development experience remains valuable, the primary emphasis is on platform leadership, CI/CD and release-process awareness, documentation, adoption, governance, and cross-functional enablement rather than day-to-day component coding. 

Basic Purpose 

Responsible for the strategic development, governance, and adoption of design-system practices for an assigned platform, ensuring platform-specific design tokens, components, patterns, and documentation stay aligned with CMD+R and related enterprise guidance. The role enables scalable, consistent, and accessible digital experiences across the platform by fostering shared patterns, reusable guidance, contribution discipline, and sustainable design-to-development workflows. 

This role partners closely with designers, developers, product teams, accessibility stakeholders, enterprise design-system partners, and leadership to translate platform needs into practical technical and process improvements. The ideal candidate can recognize gaps in component implementation, token usage, documentation, release readiness, and CI/CD workflows, then collaborate with cross-functional partners to improve quality, consistency, and speed to delivery within the platform. 

Required Qualifications 

· 5+ years of experience in design systems, product design, design operations, front-end engineering, or a related digital product discipline. 

· Proven track record of leading, governing, or significantly contributing to design-system adoption for a product area, platform, or large-scale digital experience. 

· Working knowledge of front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern component frameworks or libraries such as React or Vue; ability to collaborate with engineers and evaluate technical feasibility is required, while deep hands-on coding is not the primary role expectation. 

· Familiarity with design token management, theming systems, component-library architecture, and cross-platform implementation considerations. 

· Understanding of CI/CD concepts relevant to design-system delivery, including build, test, release, versioning, documentation, dependency, and quality-check workflows. 

· Ability to identify technical and process gaps, translate them into clear recommendations, and collaborate with designers, developers, product partners, accessibility stakeholders, enterprise design-system partners, and leadership to improve platform workflows. 

· Strong understanding of design principles, UI/UX best practices, accessibility standards, and inclusive digital experience practices, including WCAG. 

· Experience with design tools such as Figma and documentation platforms such as Storybook or Zeroheight. 

· Excellent communication, facilitation, leadership, stakeholder management, and change-management skills. 

Preferred Qualifications 

· Experience partnering with front-end engineering teams on component-library workflows, design token pipelines, CI/CD practices, platform release governance, or documentation automation. 

· Hands-on experience creating front-end prototypes, implementation examples, or component documentation using HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Vue, or similar technologies. 

· Experience supporting a hybrid design-system model where enterprise guidance is adapted into platform-specific implementation and adoption practices. 

· Experience with mobile or cross-platform design-system considerations, including React Native, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, or similar frameworks. 

· Background in design operations, design tooling, documentation strategy, or platform-level design-system governance. 

· Experience supporting accessibility audits, design-system quality reviews, adoption measurement, or contribution-model improvement. 

· Contributions to open-source design systems, UI libraries, or reusable internal platform libraries.