Partner 20, Design Systems Lead
$210,000–$245,000 year
On-site · New York City, New York, United States or Menlo Park, California, United States
Job Summary
Design Systems Lead at a16z owns and evolves the infrastructure for brand design systems, translating the firm’s visual language into scalable templates, component libraries, AI skills, and self-serve templates. You’ll build high-volume design outputs (presentations, social assets, event materials), write Markdown-based brand documentation and skill instructions, develop AI-powered tools, vibe-code lightweight apps, and create templates that enable non-designers to produce polished, on-brand work independently. You’ll pair with designers to simplify complex visual systems into reusable building blocks, track adoption and efficiency, and mentor across the firm.
Required Qualifications
- 4+ years of experience in brand design, design systems, product design, or a related field
- Strong Figma skills, including building and maintaining design systems, libraries, and component structures
- Experience writing and scaling AI skills, not just prompting, but structuring reference frameworks, markdown files, and instruction sets
- Comfortable vibe-coding: you've built lightweight apps, generators, or custom tools for design use cases
- AI is already part of how you work, not something you're experimenting with
- A natural collaborator with low ego and high empathy: you work well across teams and can translate between design thinking and the needs of people who don't speak it
Additional Requirements
- E-Verify participation mentioned but not a restriction on applicants
Apply with one swipe on Sorce. We auto-fill applications and apply on your behalf — no cover letters, no 40-minute forms.
Hiring someone like this?
Get your role in front of qualified candidates on Sorce.