Senior Product Designer | Design Systems

About the role:

8am is looking for a Senior Design System Designer to help steward, strengthen, and evolve our design system as a critical foundation for how we build product experiences. This role builds on work that is already in place, focusing on addressing gaps, modernizing foundational and commonly used patterns and components, and helping inform scalable governance.

The design system at 8am is a key enabler for consistency, quality, and velocity across teams. In this role, you will partner closely with Product Management, Engineering, and the broader Front End Experiences team to ensure the system supports real product needs, reduces friction, and enables teams to deliver cohesive, accessible, and trustworthy experiences at scale.

This is a hands-on senior role focused on execution, collaboration, and influence. You will help teams move faster while protecting the integrity and long-term health of the system.

About us:

At 8am, our vision is to power a world where professionals thrive. We start every day on a mission to empower professionals with the most trusted, innovative technology to deliver world-class outcomes for their clients and exceptional financial results for their business. They count on our purpose-built solutions to simplify operations, ensure compliance, and fuel profitable growth, so they can focus on their clients and do more of the work that matters.

Founded in 2005, 8am™ (formerly AffiniPay) is the professional business platform built to help legal, accounting, and other client-focused professionals run stronger, more profitable businesses. Today, more than 250,000 professionals across the U.S. trust 8am to help them work smarter, serve clients better, and unlock their full potential. We have been recognized as one of Inc 5000’s fastest growing companies in the U.S. for 13 years in a row, and as a result, our teams continue to grow as well!

What you'll do:

Design System Stewardship and Evolution

• Shepherd and strengthen the existing design system, building on established foundations
• Identify gaps, inconsistencies, and opportunities through audits and team feedback
• Improve and modernize foundational and commonly used components and patterns
• Ensure system decisions support scalability, usability, and maintainability
• Consider cross platform needs, including mobile, when evolving system foundations, patterns, and commonly used components

Collaboration and Partnership

• Partner closely with Product Management and Engineering to align system work with product priorities and technical realities
• Collaborate day to day with the Front End Experiences team on shared patterns, workflows, and standards
• Support designers and engineers consuming and contributing to the system
• Act as a trusted design system partner across product teams

Governance and Process

• Help inform and refine governance models for system contributions, updates, and maintenance
• Support clear processes for proposing, reviewing, and shipping system changes
• Balance consistency with flexibility to enable teams while protecting system integrity

Documentation and Enablement

• Improve and maintain design system documentation, usage guidance, and best practices
• Ensure documentation is clear, actionable, and useful for both designers and engineers
• Help onboard and enable teams to effectively use the design system

Quality, Accessibility, and Craft

• Champion accessibility and inclusive design standards within the system
• Ensure high quality interaction design, visual consistency, and usability across components
• Partner with engineering to ensure design intent is well represented in production

About you:

• 6 to 8+ years of product design experience, with direct ownership or deep contribution to a design system
• Proven experience evolving and maintaining an existing design system in a real product environment
• Strong collaboration skills with Product Managers and Front End Engineers
• Experience designing component based systems using tools like Figma, including libraries, variants, and tokens
• Solid understanding of front end concepts such as HTML, CSS, and component based frameworks like React
• Experience designing for mobile platforms or contributing to systems that scale across web and mobile is a strong plus
• Ability to think systemically while still executing at a detailed, hands-on level
• Clear communicator who influences through collaboration rather than authority
• Passion for design quality, consistency, and accessibility
  
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools and technologies to improve workflows, enhance decision-making, or drive innovation.

Nice to Have: 

• Experience modernizing or refactoring legacy design systems
• Familiarity with design tokens, theming, or multi brand systems
• Experience working in healthcare, fintech, or other regulated product spaces
• Prior experience contributing to or supporting design system governance

Additional Information
The annual salary range for this position is $100,000 to $150,000. The salary range for performing this role outside of the US / Austin / California may differ.  8am is committed to offering competitive, fair and commensurate compensation and has provided an estimated pay range for this role. Actual compensation may vary based on job-related knowledge, skills, experience and education.
Why 8am: 

At 8am, our culture is shaped by the people who bring it to life every day. Together, we build a company rooted in continuous learning, genuine community, holistic wellness, and meaningful engagement—values that empower us as individuals and unite us as a team. Our culture is grounded in our core values: Work Smart, Win Fast; Outshine Ordinary, and We Find a Way. These values drive how we serve our customers and work with each other in a collaborative, inspiring, and empowering environment, every day.

Here’s how we support our 8Team:

• Health Insurance Coverage: We offer our 8Team a variety of medical, dental, and vision plans, designed to fit your needs, including a 100% company-paid HDHP plan for employees.
• Financial perks: We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package including annual bonuses, equity options and 401(k) or RRSP if in Canada, with a company match for all team members.
• Time for what matters: Flexible Time Off, paid holidays, and a parental leave program for our new parents.
• Wellness: Wellness stipends, mental health support, and one-on-one nutrition coaching.
• Learning and Development: Continuous learning through 8am.edu, leadership programs, professional development funds, and individually focused talent development.
• Giving back to the communities around us: Participate in our charitable matching gift program, paid time off for volunteer service, and company-sponsored volunteer events (both local and virtually).
• Engagement: Virtual and in-person team-building events, quarterly award recognition through our Rise & Shine Award of Excellence Program, and our peer-to-peer appreciation platform.

At 8am, we don’t just offer benefits - we create an environment where people can thrive, grow, and make a real impact every day.

Diversity, equity & inclusion at 8am:

At 8am, we recognize that innovation occurs with a strong team of people who are diverse in background, personality, talent and ideas. Experience comes in many forms and ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace where we continue to learn from each other is an integral part of our culture. We are committed to creating a welcoming and transparent environment for all that embraces those differences through education, equal access to opportunities and information, inclusionary programs, and community outreach. 

Security advisory:

Our hiring teams at 8am are dedicated to recruiting top talent that share our passion for serving the professional services industry through innovative financial technology.  As such, our Talent Acquisition Team only follows legitimate hiring practices.  We will always communicate with our candidates using emails with the 8am domain and will never ask for sensitive/personal data during the application process.  All interviews take place over phone call, Zoom/Google Meet or in person.  All offers are communicated verbally by our Talent Acquisition Specialists with a written offer letter as a follow up.