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We're looking for a systems-minded design leader who can translate vision into scalable infrastructure. As Senior Manager of Design Systems, you'll evolve Yum!'s design system, from a single-brand library into the foundation for multi-brand, operator, and guest-facing experiences across Byte's ecosystem.
You'll bridge the gap between design craft and technical execution-ensuring every designer and developer can design, build, and ship faster with consistency, accessibility, and quality.
This is a pivotal role for someone who can think strategically, work technically, and lead collaboratively in a high-change, multi-brand environment.
What You'll Do
1. Evolve and Scale the Helium Design System

• Lead the evolution of Helium into a production-grade design system-structured, documented, and aligned with engineering implementation.
• Audit, rationalize, and version component libraries; define naming, tokens, and usage conventions.
• Partner with front-end leads to establish design-to-code parity, Storybook documentation, and automated QA for accessibility and performance.
• Deliver Helium v2 as the baseline for multi-brand and operator-facing experiences.

2. Build Foundations for Multi-Brand and Operator-Facing Systems

• Define token architecture, theming, and brand expression models to enable cross-brand customization and localization.
• Partner with the Head of Design and Director of Digital Ordering to prototype the operator-facing design system (Nitrogen) that will power tools like Smart Ops, Portal, and Coach.
• Create guidelines that unify guest- and operator-facing patterns into a cohesive experience language.

3. Architect Governance and Operations

• Implement the governance model (intake review release deprecation) to maintain quality and consistency.
• Establish design system rituals-component reviews, change logs, release cycles, contribution audits-and measure adoption and velocity.
• Integrate with engineering and design ops teams to align JIRA workflows, Figma management, and contribution tracking.
• Define success metrics that tie system maturity to business and design velocity outcomes.

4. Lead and Grow the Design Systems Team

• Manage and mentor a small team of system designers; coach on component design, documentation, and technical collaboration.
• Define hiring needs, grow team capabilities, and establish learning pathways for systems and tooling expertise.
• Model calm, clarity, and structure-bringing order to high-change environments.
• Foster a culture of enablement where system adoption feels empowering, not restrictive.

5. Cross-Functional Leadership

• Collaborate with engineering to integrate Helium into the product development lifecycle and ensure consistent handoff between Figma and code.
• Partner with Product and Brand Design leads to align patterns across Digital Ordering and Smart Ops.
• Communicate roadmap, adoption metrics, and upcoming releases to cross-functional partners and executives.
• Advocate for scalable design excellence-positioning Helium as infrastructure that accelerates innovation.

Mindset and Leadership Approach

• Systemic Thinker: Connects design, brand, and engineering systems into a single ecosystem.
• Builder: Brings hands-on energy-designing components, documenting rigorously, and proving value through delivery.
• Translator: Moves fluidly between design, engineering, and executive conversations.
• Leader: Develops people, not just processes-turns ambiguity into clarity for teams.
• Pragmatic Visionary: Balances craft excellence with delivery urgency; builds for now and next.

What You'll Bring

• 10-12+ years of experience in Product or UX Design, with 5+ years leading or contributing to large-scale design systems.
• Proven record of building or evolving systems in enterprise, multi-product, or multi-brand environments.
• Strong design foundation in UX/UI craft-able to guide component design decisions that balance usability, brand, and scalability.
• Deep technical fluency in Figma architecture, tokens, component APIs, accessibility, and front-end frameworks (e.g., React, Storybook, CSS/JS tokens).
• Experience leading cross-functional teams and partnering closely with engineers on design-to-code workflow integration.
• Demonstrated success introducing governance models, release cadences, and documentation that scale with product velocity.
• Ability to lead through ambiguity and influence without authority-using clarity, communication, and structure to align teams.
• Comfortable operating in complex, distributed tool environments (multiple JIRA instances, cross-team intake).
• Excellent communicator-capable of framing design systems work in terms of business impact, velocity, and technical quality.

Salary Range: $160,000 - $180,000 + bonus elibility