Principal Product Designer – Design Systems
| Company | Palo Alto Networks |
|---|---|
| Location | Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| Salary | $Not Provided – $Not Provided |
| Type | Full-Time |
| Degrees | |
| Experience Level | Senior |
Requirements
- 6–8+ years of product design experience
- 3+ years leading design systems in complex enterprise environments
- Expertise in creating and evolving systems, UI libraries, and token-based architecture using Figma and front-end frameworks
- Experience empowering teams with scalable tooling, contribution models, and governance practices that enable efficiency without slowing progress
- Systems-thinking mindset, connecting design patterns to product goals, workflows, and constraints, with a focus on scalability and practical implementation
- Collaborative approach, driving execution independently while mentoring others and advocating for design quality across functions
- Excellent communication skills, simplifying complex concepts and influencing teams to adopt and improve design systems
- Data-driven, using user feedback to continuously improve product design.
Responsibilities
- Own the Design System, End-to-End: Collaborate with designers to expand the system thoughtfully, and lead enablement efforts to keep the team informed and empowered to use what’s new. Build and maintain foundations, tokens, components, templates, and guidelines in Figma. Partner closely with engineers to ensure consistent, high-quality implementation in code. Actively support visual QA, file-to-prod alignment, and bug resolution. Stay ahead of industry best practices to ensure the system remains modern, effective, and scalable.
- Shape the Future: Lead the execution and roadmap for a scalable, flexible design system that supports a growing ecosystem of enterprise products and users. Partner with engineers to develop and maintain a robust design-to-code pipeline, ensuring pixel-perfect implementation, end-to-end.
- Product Design: Partner with product designers to define and implement new systems based on use cases and user feedback. Proactively conduct A/B testing and audits, using data to inform design decisions and continuously improve the user experience.
- Hands-On Delivery: Build and maintain sub-atomic foundations, Boolean components, interaction patterns, and page templates, while defining LLM content guidelines. Ensure a unified Figma file as the source of truth for designers, integrate Storybook for seamless handoff, and establish clear logic for reusability and scalability.
- Drive Consistency & Product Quality: Ensure visual and interaction consistency across teams and products. Audit components for performance, accessibility, and clarity—and evolve them to meet modern standards. Utilize Jira dashboards to provide visibility and accountability, while proactively addressing and resolving issues. Develop a plan to reduce UX bugs upstream, ensuring that issues are addressed before they reach the codebase.
- Centralized Repository & Integration: Establish and maintain a centralized design system library for easy access, sharing, and version control of design components. Work closely with design teams to ensure seamless integration of the design system into their workflows.
- Enablement: Guide senior designers and cross-functional teams on systems thinking, driving adoption through workshops, design reviews, and office hours. Champion a bottom-up contribution model by creating tools, workflows, and ongoing support that empower teams to contribute confidently and scale the design system across the organization.
- Governance & Flexibility: Create operating models that allow for easy, scalable contributions to the design system while maintaining high-quality standards. Develop programs to scale governance processes, ensuring quality signals are consistently in check. Focus on balancing consistency with flexibility, with the goal of corralling creativity—not controlling it—so teams can work efficiently and productively.
- Support Migration & Modernization: Lead initiatives to refactor legacy designs into the system. Balance business timelines with thoughtful, user-centered migration plans.
Preferred Qualifications
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No preferred qualifications provided.