Design System & Operations Manager in Leeds

Job Title

Design System & Operations Manager

Reports to

Head of Design

Department

Streaming Product & Growth

Location

Leeds (this role requires travel between Leeds & London offices once per fortnight)

Job Grade

DEPARTMENT DESCRIPTION

The Streaming department is responsible for the strategy, development, and operation of our digital streaming platform, delivering high-quality, on-demand content to audiences across multiple devices and markets.

The team drives innovation in user experience, content delivery, and platform technology, ensuring our streaming service remains competitive and aligned with evolving consumer expectations.

Working cross-functionally with technology, marketing, content and editorial, commercial and insights, the department is at the forefront of digital transformation enabling the business to reach new audiences and maximize engagement in a rapidly changing media landscape as part of our FAST Forward strategy.

JOB PURPOSE

The Design System & Operations Manager will own, scale, and continuously improve our cross-platform design system (big screen/OTT, mobile, and desktop) and work in partnership with Editorial, Brand, Marketing and Audience Optimisation to drive and apply consistency across full end to end experience.

They will lead the charge on ensuring we stay ahead of accessibility standards and that all customer touchpoints adhere to them.

They will lead the product & design operations to enable high quality, efficient product and design delivery.

Acting as a facilitative leader for product and design practice, the role will drive governance, tooling and workflows across the product and design operations, ensuring quality and efficient product and design delivery.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Define and maintain the multi-platform design system (foundations, tokens, components, patterns, motion), ensuring parity across mobile, desktop, and big screen.
• Establish and evolve design system governance: contribution model, review gates, versioning, and release notes.
• Create clear documentation, guidance, and usage examples to drive adoption across Product, Design, Engineering, Editorial, and CRM.
• Champion accessibility as non-negotiable; embed standards into foundations, components, and patterns.
• Partner with Brand and Marketing to ensure brand guidelines translate into systemised tokens and components that are usable across the full end to end experience and devices.
• Collaborate with Editorial and CRM teams to embed design system elements into templates, campaigns, and content workflows, ensuring consistency and performance.
• Manage design tooling (e. g., Figma libraries, plugins), file hygiene, naming conventions, branching, and library publication.
• Facilitate cross-functional rituals (crits, pattern reviews, design/dev syncs, accessibility clinics) to align decisions and unblock teams.
• Support discovery and delivery by enabling reusable assets (journey maps, templates, flows) and promoting evidence-based decision-making.
• Coach Product Designers and Product Owners on design system usage, experimentation, and accessibility driving a balance with creativity, efficiency and consistency.
• Define KPIs for the design system (adoption, duplication reduction, build velocity, accessibility compliance, NPS of internal users).
• Use insights and feedback loops to iterate the system; run A/B or MVT where relevant to validate pattern efficacy.
• Publish regular reports on system impact, risks, and opportunities to leadership and stakeholders.
• Coordinate with Technology, QA, and 3rd-party development partners to ensure feasibility, performance, and accessibility of components across platforms.
• Work cross functionally to validate patterns and optimise key journeys.
• CAPABILITIES
• Strategic planning and delivery
• Leads strategically, translating organisational goals into clear priorities, plans and measurable outcomes.
• Performance and commercial acumen
• Demonstrates strong commercial awareness and accountability for delivering sustainable performance.
• Viewer and customer centric mindset
• Places audiences, customers, and partners at the heart of decision‑making and solution design.
• Data led and analytical decision making
• Uses data, insight, and evidence to drive decisions, evaluate impact and improve outcomes.
• Cross‑Functional collaboration and agile leadership
• Leads collaboratively across boundaries, fostering agility, experimentation, and shared ownership.
• Market Awareness and innovation
• Scans the external environment to anticipate change, identify opportunities and drive innovation.
• BEHAVIOURS
• Growth mindset (Grow)
• Seeks challenge with a curious mindset and a strong desire to learn, grow and continually improve.
• Accountability (Get stuff done)
• Delivers results and takes responsibility for outcomes.
• Collaboration (Include)
• Uses empathy and encourages co‑creation and inclusive partnerships, to get to better outcomes.
• Transformation (Innovate)
• Embraces and proactively drives change, with resilience and tenacity.
• KEY STAKEHOLDERS
• Product Director
• Product Team
• Streaming Business Director
• Marketing and Brand
• Content and Editorial
• Growth and Audience Optimisation
• Technology (internal and 3rd party)
• Audience Insights

ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCE

• Proven experience in defining, maintaining, and scaling multi‑platform design systems (foundations, tokens, components, patterns, motion) in the media industry.
• Strong understanding of design system governance (contribution models, review gates, versioning, release notes).
• Deep knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG, EAA) and embedding accessibility into design systems and workflows.
• Experience facilitating cross‑functional rituals (design critiques, pattern reviews, accessibility clinics) and leading cross functional teams driving design system adoption.
• Experience driving governance, tooling, and workflows across product and design teams to improve efficiency and quality.
• Skilled in managing design tooling (e. g., Figma libraries, plugins), file hygiene, naming conventions, and branching strategies.
• Ability to create clear, comprehensive documentation and usage guidelines for design systems.
• Strong stakeholder communication skills, including reporting on KPIs, adoption metrics, and system impact.
• Experience using insights and feedback loops to iterate and improve design systems.
• Experience translating brand guidelines into systemised tokens and components for use across marketing and editorial workflows.
• Familiarity with user research, journey mapping, and data‑driven decision‑making to inform design system evolution.
• Ability to coach designers and product owners on design system usage, accessibility, and experimentation.

DESIRABLE EXPERIENCE

• Experience operationalising accessibility testing (manual and automated) with QA and engineering teams.
• Understanding of front‑end development frameworks and ability to partner with engineering teams on feasibility and performance.
• Familiarity with automated testing tools and processes for design system components.
• Experience running A/B or multivariate tests to validate design patterns and improve user experience.
• Experience working with external development partners to ensure design system consistency and accessibility compliance.
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