Royal Mail
Design System Specialist
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Job reference 341213
Design System Specialist
Competitive salary plus car allowance, healthcare, 18% annual bonus potential, 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays rising with service and a company pension scheme with highly competitive contribution rates
Permanent, Full time
Royal Mail Farringdon x3 days in office
Design System Specialist, Design, Product and UX
Royal Mail is changing how we serve our customers, and the role of design has never been more important in shaping how we do that. We are in the most significant period of transformation in our 500-year history, rebuilding the services that millions of people rely on every day. To do that well, we need exceptional designers who can connect strategy with delivery, bring people along with evidence and clear thinking, and set standards that elevate the work of everyone around them.
We are looking for a Design System Specialist to own the design side of our design system, the token architecture, component design and governance that our digital product teams build from. If you're energized by the chance to make design work at scale, we would love to hear from you.
About The Role
As Design System Specialist, you will own the design system as the shared foundation product teams build and automate from: design language and principles, design tokens, the component library, the Figma-to-code contract, and the documentation and governance to ensure integrity and use at scale, keeping Royal Mail's brand identity consistent across every surface.
This individual contributor role sits at the intersection of design and engineering. You will operate agents that monitor drift, generate documentation and support design QA, with your focus on architecture decisions, judgement calls and stakeholder alignment.
What You'll Be Doing
At its core, this role is about building the foundation that lets the rest of the design and engineering organization move faster, with more consistency and less rework.
Design system architecture
- Architect the design system for clarity at scale: token architecture, component rules and documented decision criteria that keep the system consistent as it grows.
- Own the propagation pipeline from Figma into engineering's codebase, partnering with engineering and frontend teams so tokens, components and patterns are consumable by code as well as by designers.
- Define and maintain conventions across Figma, including file structure, layer naming and handoff annotations, and keep them enforced as the team scales.
AI-enabled practice
- Operate agents that monitor drift between Figma and production, flag issues and support design QA, reviewing outputs and triaging what needs your judgement.
- Build automation around the system, including plugins, scripts and Figma Make workflows, to remove repetitive work from designers and engineers alike.
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Governance and quality
- Establish and maintain documentation and governance for design system components, including versioning, naming conventions, contribution guidelines and change management for both human and agent use.
- Lead design system audits and accessibility reviews, ensuring components meet WCAG 2.2 AA by default.
Adoption and enablement
- Run regular design system office hours and hands-on support for designers and engineers across teams, driving effective adoption in addition to component documentation.
- Define and track adoption KPIs that measure the design system's impact on delivery speed, consistency, and quality.
- Make the case for system investment to product and engineering leadership, building the stakeholder relationships that keep the system funded and prioritized.
- Embed design system adoption into platform modernization and journey rebuild work, so new products default to system-based design from the outset.
About You
You will bring strong systems thinking, comfort operating at the intersection of design and engineering, and the stakeholder skills to make the case for why the design system matters.
Essential Experience And Skills
- A track record of leading design system or platform design capability within a product organization, evidenced by a portfolio of system architecture, tokens and documented governance.
- Experience translating brand identity and visual language into a scalable design system, ensuring tokens and components stay true to the brand as it grows.
- Working knowledge of HTML, CSS and at least one component-based front-end framework, enough to communicate fluently with engineers and specify tokens that propagate cleanly.
- Demonstrated practice building or operating automation around design tools such as Figma plugins, scripts or Figma Make.
- Comfortable writing structured prompts and iterating on rule sets that govern agent behaviour around the design system.
- Strong systems thinking, understanding the needs humans and agents as consumers of the system.
- Track record of stakeholder management, making the case for design system investment with product and engineering leadership.
- Proven experience supporting WCAG 2.2 AA and inclusive design principles within design systems.
Personal Attributes
- Systems thinker, comfortable holding architecture-level detail and the bigger picture at once.
- Pragmatic and focused on adoption and real-world usage.
- Confident making the case for system investment to senior stakeholders.
- Comfortable building capability from the ground up in a growing design function.
- Collaborative, used to working closely with both engineers and designers to achieve system-wide goals.
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Extra Benefits
- Family friendly support - enhanced maternity pay, paternity leave, adoption leave and shared parental leave
- Supportive and generous company sick pay
- Funded Dental – As a manager you are eligible to a level of employer funded dental insurance*
- Health Assessment – As a manager you are eligible to an employer funded health assessment every 2 years*
- Benefits Account – You will have access to your personal benefits account on our ‘My Bundle+’ platform. There are more than 800 retail offers to help you save on things like groceries, days out, holidays and your household bills as well as employer provided and voluntary benefits to suit your lifestyle.
- Your Wellbeing - you and your family have 24/7 access to services and tools to help you get the most out of life. From your physical and mental health to financial and social support and advice. It’s free, and it’s for everyone.
Next Steps
To apply, please submit your CV alongside a portfolio that demonstrates your service design work. Your portfolio should evidence how you have applied service design practices to positively impact customer and business outcomes.
Shortlisted candidates will be invited to a face-to-face interview with the Design Director, comprising a pre-prepared design task and competency and capability questions. To help you prepare, we will provide your interview questions in advance.
We understand that candidates may not meet all the criteria for the role. If your experience is different, but you have relevant skills we’d love to hear from you. (delete if essential criteria only)
Royal Mail Group is committed to inclusion and representing the diverse communities we serve. We welcome applications from all individuals. As a proud Gold signatory to the Armed Forces Covenant, we especially encourage applications from the Armed Forces community, including cadet instructors and spouses/partners.
We are committed to ensuring an inclusive recruitment process. If you require any adjustments to support you during the hiring process, please discuss these with your recruiter when contacted.
We are Forces family friendly and a Gold signatory to the Armed Forces Covenant. We welcome applications from ex-Armed Forces personnel, reservists, veterans, cadet instructors and military spouses/partners.
For more information on Royal Mail Group and our values please click here: https://www.internationaldistributionsservices.com/en/about-us/
Closing Date: 30th July 2026
Please note, this advert may close early if the appropriate number of applications has been reached.
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