Work Arrangement
This role is categorized as remote or hybrid to Warren, MI, Austin, TX or Mountain View, CA. Remote candidates will be considered.
If you live within 50 miles of a GM hub location, you are expected to report to the office three times per week, or other frequency dictated by the business.
If you live outside a 50 mile radius of these locations, please still apply.
The Role
As a Design Manager within the HID Platform Governance team, you will oversee the integrity, scalability, and long-term health of GM’s web and app design system. This is a senior individual contributor role with broad organizational influence. You will operate at the intersection of design systems, governance, and cross-functional alignment, ensuring that teams across GM build with coherence, quality, and intent.
This role requires both deep systems knowledge and the confidence to navigate high-stakes conversations with senior Marketing, Product, Engineering and Agency partners when work diverges from established standards. You are not a production designer. You are a highly experienced and technically skilled advocate of design quality, active at the organizational level with 10+ years of hands-on experience designing for software, web, and mobile products.
You are a Figma expert and bring strong systems thinking and a passion for scalable, well-documented design processes. Your craft is rooted in clarity, structure, and functionality—not just aesthetics—and you’re comfortable collaborating closely with engineers to ensure high-fidelity implementation.
What You’ll Do
- Own and evolve a team of designers focusing on core elements of GM’s web and app design system, including patterns, guidelines, and usage principles.
- Define clear system boundaries and guardrails, including where flexibility is allowed and where it is not.
- Partner with Marketing, Product, Engineering, and external agencies to ensure proper adoption and use of the design system.
- Lead design reviews focused on system alignment, quality, and long-term scalability rather than surface-level execution.
- Intervene when teams or agencies go off-system, guiding course correction through principled, credible design rationale.
- Translate system intent into clear guidance, documentation, and decision frameworks that teams can use.
- Act as a advocate for design quality and system application in complex, sometimes adversarial conversations where brand, speed, or local needs conflict with system integrity.
- Mentor designers across the organization on systems thinking, design judgment, and governance best practices.
- Champion accessibility, inclusivity, and consistency as non-negotiable system qualities.
- Present system strategy, decisions, and tradeoffs to senior leadership and executive stakeholders.
Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)
- Bachelor’s degree in Design, Human Computer Interaction, Visual Communications, or related field, or equivalent professional experience.
- 10+ years of professional experience in product design, systems design, or design systems roles.
- Demonstrated experience owning or significantly contributing to large-scale design systems across multiple products, brands, or platforms.
- Strong portfolio showing system-level thinking, decision-making frameworks, and long-term impact rather than only artifact production.
- Proven ability to influence without direct authority and to hold firm on standards under pressure.
- Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, including experience presenting to senior leaders and navigating contentious discussions.
- Deep expertise in modern design tools and systems workflows, including Figma-based system management.
What Will Give You a Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications)
- Experience working with global brands, complex brand architectures, or federated organizations.
- Prior experience engaging with Marketing organizations and external agencies in governance or review contexts.
- Background in automotive, enterprise platforms, or large-scale digital ecosystems.
- Demonstrated success balancing standardization with brand expression and local market needs.
- Experience defining governance models, review processes, or contribution frameworks for design systems.
- Strong understanding of accessibility standards and their application at the system level.
GM Values & Behaviors
This role models GM’s values — Customers, Excellence, Relationships, Truth — and demonstrates GM Behaviors:
- Win with integrity
- Innovate & embrace change
- Move with urgency
- Lead as one team
- Commit to customers
- Speak fearlessly
- Be inclusive
- Own the outcome
