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 Staff Systems Designer within the HID Platform Governance team, you will steward 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 agent of design quality, active at the organizational level with 7+ 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 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 senior design representative 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.
- 7+ 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
