Manager (IC), Product Design - Design Systems

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial and other benefits designed to support total well-being. Eligibility can vary based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level. You can also expect performance-based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI).

This role sits within Capital One’s Premium Products and Travel Design team, focusing on Design Systems. You will help shape how component architecture scales across product experiences, with end-to-end ownership from Figma tokenization through production-ready front-end code, plus AI-native governance that keeps automated patterns consistent with brand and user needs. The work includes cross-functional pod leadership, quality and metrics, and strengthening design community practices.

What you’ll do

• Build, govern, and maintain scalable component libraries and act as the long-term guardian across design files and code repositories by partnering directly inside the repo with engineering, reviewing for design parity, and shipping foundational front-end updates when needed.
• Define system logic, prompt criteria, and UX frameworks that guide AI-generated patterns, serving as an experience auditor to reduce fragmented user experiences.
• Handle complex tech ecosystems by mapping disparate data schemas into structurally sound user flows, and designing sophisticated component interactions for both humans and automated AI agents.
• Partner as the core design catalyst in a dedicated cross-functional pod, serving as the technical peer to engineers and aligning local Premium systems with Enterprise Design Systems standards, including cases where Premium intentionally deviates.
• Run heuristic evaluations of live experiences, establishing frameworks and UX metrics to measure health, adoption, and end-to-end coherence of system journeys.
• Operate as a player/coach and technical mentor: lead workshops, facilitate onboarding for new product teams, coach product designers on scaling systemic thinking and technical fluency, and champion a contribution governance model that enables designers to co-create without breaking core integrity.

What you bring

• At least 6 years of experience in a Product Design, Systems Design, or Design Engineering role.
• At least 5 years building and scaling multi-level design systems.

Key expected outputs

• Production-Ready Component Repositories & Token Pipelines: living, accessible UI component libraries and design token schemas implemented across design files and front-end repositories.
• AI-Native Design Guardrails: playbooks, logic schemas, and constraint models that govern how automated tooling generates layouts without losing brand integrity.
• End-to-End Journey Optimization: gap analyses and “North Star” servicing roadmaps that connect technical scalability with premium user experiences.
• Systemic Documentation: high-fidelity spec sheets, accessibility (A11y) mapping, and documentation that clarifies the interaction between human intent and automated agent execution.
• Contribution Frameworks & Enablement Programs: onboarding materials, contribution guardrails, and workshops that build capability with advanced tokens, code parity workflows, and AI-assisted design tooling.

Tools and technologies

• Figma
• React
• HTML/CSS
• Token pipelines
• Claude

Preferred qualifications

• Experience working in highly regulated, data-heavy, or premium/travel-specific digital ecosystems.
• A strong portfolio showing complex systems problem-solving, UI engineering artifacts, and documentation for automated or dynamic layouts.
• Deep code literacy to navigate, review, and collaborate within front-end code repositories (for example React, HTML/CSS, or token pipelines), plus experience using AI-assisted development tools to accelerate baseline front-end implementation and prototyping.
• Experience applying advanced AI tooling or LLM workflows (for example Claude and automated code generation) within design or development pipelines.

Location: Richmond, VA (onsite). Salary: USD 149,800 - 171,000 per yearly.