Senior Design Systems Manager

Change the way the world travels

Join the [REDACTED] journey to connect people with unforgettable travel experiences around the world. Millions look to us for unique activities they can trust, and it’s all powered by our commitment to make every single journey extraordinary - including yours.

Ready to unlock your potential with a community of fellow explorers? Find your next role at our Berlin HQ or one of our local offices around the globe, from New York to Bangkok. Head to [REDACTED] to take the first step.

Team mission

As our Senior Design Systems Manager, you will help lead [REDACTED] into the future with best in systems design thinking and processes. This role is one of the most important strategic leadership roles within the UX organization, helping us to move into the future of product development organizations. We believe the future XFN product roles, designers to PM, will move from specialists to more full stack thinking across the product development process. This includes evolving systems processes with our XFN partners with automated tooling, new AI systems tooling, and how we should approach scaling our systems with accessibility and localization teams.

You will plan, build, and implement high quality product design patterns that help our travelers and suppliers understand what we offer simply and effectively. Your goal internally is to create processes for efficiency and quality at scale with your XFN partners. You will both consolidate and seed new patterns and design thinking into the organization and products.

You will work at multiple levels - from strategic to tactical - from helping to define the team’s strategy and vision, from processes to pixels. You must have empathy across our tech functional needs, as well as our customers, in order to create intuitive experiences that make it easy to get the job done. We’re looking for a seasoned manager who thrives in ambiguity, has a strong human-centered design process, has the desire to learn and collaborate cross-functionally, and design systematic solutions and processes that are equally thoughtful and elegant.

Your mission

• Shape, govern, and evolve the design language team and its capabilities at [REDACTED] across functions, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and scalability across products.
• You will lead us into a new world of design systems, where automation, AI-assisted tooling, and code-driven design play central roles, you will bridge design, engineering, and product strategy.
• Partner closely with multi-disciplinary team members - Product Design, Content Design, Product Management, Engineering, Research, Data products, and others – to take our business to the next level.
• You’re a master of deploying your design team at varying levels, from centralized processes to embedded ones, creating new ways of working that rid the process of unnecessary stages and creating new ways of working that will level up the entire tech organization’s product development process.
• Work across all stages of the product development process (requirements gathering, ideation, concept development, validation, wireframing, prototyping, final visual design, and implementation support).
• Guide teams in using the system effectively, while nurturing a culture that embraces system thinking over isolated solutions.
• Anticipate and embed emerging trends like generative UI, adaptive theming, and real-time personalization into the system roadmap.
• You are responsible for the team’s output - beautiful, emotionally compelling, pixel-perfect patterns and processes shaping the design systems industry.
• Advance the discipline of high quality product design within the organization.
• You bring a proactive approach to your work, embracing challenges and ambiguity with confidence. Your learning-by-doing mindset allows you to adapt quickly and deliver impactful results in dynamic environments.
• You are skilled at sequencing complex projects into manageable, actionable steps that drive progress across teams. You ensure every design decision is grounded in solving real user problems while aligning with business objectives.

Your toolkit

• 10+ years of experience in product design leadership, leading products with strong systems thinking
• Strong vision thinking, with proven projects that have shaped/influenced an organization’s way of thinking
• Track record of designing and shipping design patterns that have scaled to millions of users and had successful outcomes for global users and the business.
• AI super user, knowing the ongoing trends and capabilities with AI in design systems.
• Created efficiencies with your teams in various engagement models, from centralized to embedded to help support a tech organization with the system design.
• You champion and understand the interplay between frontend interactions and backend logic, ensuring your designs are not only visually compelling but also technically feasible. Your collaboration with engineers is seamless, bridging the gap between design intent and technical execution.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, and drive clarity that brings the user, technology, and business together to aid their roadmaps and increase the output of the design system.
• Experience connecting the dots across the organization with other related initiatives across the company while driving collaboration.
• Exceptional collaboration skills with proven processes that brings the tech functions together to thoughtfully craft a design system in code and pixels.
• Extraordinary thoughtfulness in design craft for interaction design and prototyping.
• Humble, collaborative approach to partnering with PMs, engineers, and business stakeholders to find the best solution together.
• Experience collaborating with machine learning and data science teams to influence design from a user-centered and GenAI lens.

When evaluating your experience and skills we will be focusing on:

• An outstanding portfolio, where your leadership shaped how a company thinks about design, the benefits of consistency and scale.
• Proven leadership in pivoting to various business needs, effectively moving your designers towards various, shifting goals.
• Strong vision and thought leadership where your influence proved effective for the larger team.
• Effective English verbal/written communication and presentation skills, with the ability to successfully articulate/advocate design concepts to your partner team.
• Strong ability to think technically and collaborate seamlessly with engineering managers and data science leaders as it pertains to understanding the benefits, possibilities, and constraints of common coding languages and AI/machine learning platforms. You work with them to create a vision of our product in the future that is an outcome of that collaboration.
• Effective time management skills to balance project schedules with fast-paced deadlines.

How we’ll make your career journey extraordinary

• Annual personal growth budget and mentorship programs for continuous learning and development
• Work from anywhere in the world for 30 days per year
• A hybrid working approach with three days of in office collaboration (Mon, Tue, Thur) and two days of optional at home focus time.
• Opportunities to collaborate and socialize with a quarterly team event budget
• Access to leading AI tools plus the resources and budget to get the most out of them
• Monthly transportation and fitness budget
• Discounts for you, your friends, and family on [REDACTED] activities
• Language reimbursement program
• Health and wellness benefits

And more…

How to apply

Submit your CV/resume in English using the form below. For tips and insights into our hiring process and culture, check out ‘how we hire’ and ‘life at [REDACTED]’. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at [REDACTED].

We’re an equal opportunities employer

Our commitment is that every qualified person will be evaluated according to their skills regardless of age, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability status, or religion. Please refrain from including your picture and age with your application.

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