Head of Design Systems, Citi

Citi

Location:
United Kingdom, Belfast

Category:
IT - Software Development

Contract Type:
Not provided

Salary:

Not provided

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Job Description:

Head of Design Systems to lead the strategy, technology, and creative direction of our enterprise-wide design system that powers digital experiences across businesses and functions. This leader will be both a seasoned design craft practitioner and a strong engineering-minded platform owner—accountable for the visual digital brand, the system's component library and code, governance, documentation, and adoption.

Job Responsibility:

Set the multi-year vision and roadmap for the enterprise design system
Establish and chair cross-functional governance
Define adoption strategy, KPIs/OKRs, and incentives
Inventory and assess existing/legacy design systems across businesses/functions
Define a convergence strategy
Create a phased migration plan
Provide tooling and automation to accelerate safe migration
Lead engineering for the system's codebase
Ensure quality through automated testing
Integrate the system into product pipelines
Serve as the art director and custodian of our digital visual brand
Guide creative expression across retail, commercial, institutional, and employee experiences
Implement agentic workflows for design-to-code
Automated accessibility controls
Knowledge & retrieval over documentation and usage guidelines
Own the portfolio of design and research tools
Embed WCAG and regional requirements into tokens, components, patterns, and governance
Partner with Legal/Compliance, InfoSec, Model Risk on standards
Establish telemetry and reporting
Partner with Content Design and Engineering on CMS strategy
Define guidance for localization
Lead, grow, and mentor a global team of designers, developers, strategists, writers, and producers

Requirements:

Substantial years in digital product design and systems
5+ years leading enterprise design systems at scale, ideally in regulated industries (banking/fintech/insurance)
Portfolio that demonstrates design craft (UI/visual/interaction) and system leadership (tokens/components/patterns, brand evolution, before/after impact)
Hands-on fluency with modern front-end stacks (TypeScript, React/Angular or Web Components, Storybook, design tokens, theming) and CI/CD practices
ability to set PR standards and release/versioning policies
Proven art direction experience with a strong visual sensibility and motion principles applied to systemized UI
Practical experience applying generative/agentic AI to design and engineering workflows (code generation/review, unit testing, documentation playbooks, migration support, RAG) with guardrails, evaluations, and governance
Deep knowledge of digital accessibility and WCAG, assistive tech, and how to embed accessibility into tokens/components and SDLC gates
Tooling leadership: Figma Enterprise (libraries, tokens, branching, audit), research/analytics platforms (e.g., Matomo, UserTesting, Qualtrics), documentation sites, analytics/telemetry
Experience shipping products across multiple businesses and functions with i18n, L10n, and RTL considerations and regulatory/locale constraints
Exceptional stakeholder management and communication
ability to partner with CIO/CTO, Design Leadership, CMO, Enterprise Architecture, Risk/Compliance, and Product leadership

Nice to have:

Experience with headless CMS (AEM), structured content modeling, and editorial workflows
Familiarity with developer portals, npm/private registries, monorepos, and visual regression testing
Understanding of data lineage/quality as it impacts design integrity and personalization at scale
Exposure to design analytics, A/B testing, and tying system adoption to business KPIs

What we offer:

27 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)
A discretional annual performance related bonus
Private Medical Care & Life Insurance
Employee Assistance Program
Pension Plan
Paid Parental Leave
Special discounts for employees, family, and friends
Access to an array of learning and development resources

Additional Information:

Job Posted:
October 17, 2025

Employment Type:

Fulltime

Work Type:

Hybrid work

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Head of Design Systems