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Kong is hiring a Sr. Staff Product Designer to own the design system for their API and AI connectivity platform. You'll define and maintain the visual and interaction language across Kong's entire product suite, ensuring consistency, beauty, and accessibility in what customers use daily.
As the design lead for the design system, you'll report to the VP of Design and work within a ~20-person Product Design team. This is a hands-on craft role where you'll set the visual bar, build components and templates that other designers use as their foundation, and stay close enough to the product to know when the system is working.
Key responsibilities include: defining the visual language (color, typography, spacing, elevation, motion) with an eye for both beauty and function; sweating the details on component states, variants, and edge cases; maintaining meticulous organization and documentation; building accessibility in from the start (WCAG compliance and beyond); designing page templates and layout patterns; partnering with the Design Technologist on AI prototyping and Figma-to-code workflows; running office hours and critiques; mentoring designers on systems thinking; and actively tracking drift between the system and shipped product.
You'll bring 8+ years of product design experience with significant time owning or co-owning a design system at scale. You have exceptional modern visual design craft with strong opinions on typography, color, spacing, and motion. You're detail-oriented, naturally think in states and variants, and have solid knowledge of accessibility standards. You enable teams through documentation, critique, and coaching—not just building components in isolation. You prioritize the shipped product over theoretical perfection and can partner directly with engineering on implementation tradeoffs. Strong communication skills and comfort with AI-assisted prototyping and Figma workflows are essential.
Portfolio should demonstrate strong visual and interaction design, design system work (component libraries, templates, pattern documentation), evidence of enabling other designers, accessibility considerations in real decisions, and examples of driving system changes through to shipped, cohesive product outcomes.
