Senior Staff UX Designer - Design System

Workiva is seeking a Senior Staff UX Designer to join our centralized Design Foundations team. This team owns and evolves Workiva's enterprise design system, which supports shared components, interaction patterns, accessibility standards, tooling, and cohesive cross-product experiences across our B2B platform.

As a senior staff-level individual contributor, you are a highly trusted systems leader who drives impact through strategy, execution, and influence. You own company-wide design foundations initiatives, lead system architecture decisions, and ensure the design system delivers measurable value across teams and products. You partner deeply with designers, engineers, and product managers to align priorities, navigate constraints, and deliver extensible solutions that scale. This role is ideal for a designer who thrives in complexity, thinks long-term, and amplifies their impact by shaping systems, guiding teams, and defining the future experience vision-without formal people management responsibilities.

What You'll Do

• Design Systems Strategy & Architecture: Own the strategy, execution, and measurement of Workiva-wide Design Foundations initiatives. Lead the architecture and long-term evolution of Workiva's enterprise design system, ensuring it remains inclusive and extensible

• Strategic Execution: Partner deeply with Product Management and Engineering to prioritize initiatives, align roadmaps, and translate complex, cross-functional needs into actionable plans

• Enablement & Leadership: Guide and support product designers in using design system assets effectively. Build cross-organizational consensus and influence strategic direction through clear rationale and thoughtful tradeoffs

• Experience Vision: Define the aspirational future-state vision for how Workiva products will mature. Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, and improve experiences across the ecosystem

• Governance & Metrics: Define system governance, contribution models, and quality standards. Establish success metrics for system adoption and use insights to guide prioritization

• Mentorship: Mentor designers across teams, raising design maturity and systems fluency organization-wide while fostering a strong culture of systems thinking.

What You'll Need

Minimum Qualifications

• Experience: 10+ years of experience as an individual contributor in UX, product design, or systems design

• Systems Expertise: Significant experience leading or evolving a corporate design system in a complex, multi-product organization

• Software Proficiency: Expert-level proficiency with Figma, including libraries, variables, and scalable system workflows.

• Education: B.A./B.S. degree in Design, HCI, CS, or a related field (or equivalent professional experience)

Preferred Qualifications

• Systems Leadership: Proven ability to own and drive company-wide design initiatives end-to-end, including governance and lifecycle management

• Strategic Influence: Demonstrated ability to build cross-functional consensus and influence strategic prioritization without formal authority

• Analytical Thinking: Strength in translating complex organizational needs into clear systems strategies and the ability to define/evaluate success metrics

• Technical Advocacy: Deep advocacy for accessibility, inclusion, and design quality across all system decisions

• Collaborative Mindset: Comfort collaborating closely with engineers and discussing implementation tradeoffs

• Communication: Exceptional ability to articulate a strong point of view on design system practices and communicate complex architectural concepts to diverse audiences

• Emerging Tech: Experience creating, maintaining, or evolving an AI-ready/readable design system.

• Technical Background: Background in front-end development or experience working closely with component libraries (React, etc.)

• Multi-Platform: Experience designing cross-platform systems (web and native).

• Industry Experience: Familiarity designing for users in highly regulated industries (Finance, ESG, Compliance)

• Embrace your inner wanderlust - expect up to 10% travel

• Stay virtually untethered with the power of reliable internet access, enabling you to work remotely from your chosen spot, whether that's your home office or a beachside cafe

How You'll Be Rewarded

A discretionary bonus typically paid annually

Restricted Stock Units granted at time of hire

401(k) match and comprehensive employee benefits package

The salary range represents the low and high end of the salary range for this job in the US. Minimums and maximums may vary based on location. The actual salary offer will carefully consider a wide range of factors, including your skills, qualifications, experience and other relevant factors.

Employment decisions are made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status or any other protected characteristic.

Workiva is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. To request assistance with the application process, please email talentacquisition@workiva.com.

Workiva employees are required to undergo comprehensive security and privacy training tailored to their roles, ensuring adherence to company policies and regulatory standards.

Workiva supports employees in working where they work best - either from an office or remotely from any location within their country of employment.