Design Systems Manager

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About BBC Studios

BBC Studios is a world-renowned content studio and channels & streaming business, powered by British creativity, with a reach that touches audiences in every corner of the globe. We work with outstanding creative talent who are responsible for platform-defining shows from Strictly Come Dancing to Bluey, Prehistoric Planet to Planet Earth III. The range and quality of our content is unsurpassed, creating critical and commercial successes and global phenomena. From BAFTAs to RTS Awards, BBC Studios is Britain's most awarded production company and the only producer with three of the top ten shows on IMDB; we’re the home of bbc.com, the widest-read English language news website in the world; and the UK’s largest distributor of British content.

Digital News and Streaming

At BBC Global Digital News & Streaming, we aim to help people understand the world around them, make informed choices, and take an active part in society and democracy. As we expand our footprint to meet increasing demand for our style of quality and impartial journalism and unscripted content in North America, we are seeking motivated, passionate, high performing individuals across a variety of skillsets to join our global team. Our primary locations are New York, Washington DC, and London; we are seeking candidates whose location allows them to work hybrid from any of these offices. Join us and be an essential part of one of the world’s most recognized brands and trusted news organizations!

What Does It Take?

As a Design Systems Manager you will work as part of a wider product design organization within a global division across countries and time zones, helping to build the future of the BBC product suite outside the UK. You will lead the evolution and governance of our design system, ensuring consistency, scalability, and efficiency across our digital products. This role will work cross-functionally with designers, engineers, and product managers to own and shape a critical design foundation maintaining a cohesive design language and component library contributing to efforts to constantly improve the experience and visual design of our products.

In this role, you will:

• Be responsible for the overall development, maintenance, and evolution of our design system to support multiple platforms and products.
• Define and document guidelines, principles, and best practices to ensure design consistency across a complex set of files and structures.
• Collaborate closely with engineering teams to build reusable components and frameworks that are scalable and performant.
• Educate and train teams.
• Champion accessibility and inclusivity by integrating best practices into the design system.
• Empathise with user needs and provide solutions through training and educating teams outside of design.
• Work closely with design operations to provide solutions that bring efficiency to design team and development processes.
• Champion communication and educate, providing training, support, and resources to internal teams on the design system's adoption and usage.
• Stay up-to-date with industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in design systems and UI/UX.
• Feed into fostering a collaborative work environment, communicating your ideas and intentions across departments and creatively guide other designers.

Scope & Impact:

• Reports to the Global Digital News and Streaming Creative Director.
• Contribute to the creative vision for the current and future states of the product, and ensure this vision is documented, communicated, and followed.
• Able to take charge of individual project or task delivery.
• Mentors or guides junior creatives in the team.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Extensive (5+ years) experience in digital UX team environment.
• News media experience a plus.
• Relevant portfolio of recent work highlighting multiple projects demonstrating your contributions.

Behaviors

• An ability to work quickly in a high-pressure environment.
• Meticulous and detail-oriented designer.
• Creative problem solver with ambitious ideas.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with communication, diplomacy and collaboration in bounds.
• Self-motivation and the ability to positively collaborate with a team of skilled professionals.
• Maintain an active interest in culture, trends and habits of audiences consuming digital content.

Are you the right fit?

As a global business, diversity, equity, and inclusion among team members is essential to our success. We therefore encourage highly skilled candidates from traditionally under-represented groups to submit their applications, even if they don’t check absolutely every box on our list of desired work experience.

Life at BBC Studios

We don’t focus simply on what we do - we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you’ve read about our values and behaviours here. The BBC is committed to building a culturally diverse workforce and therefore strongly encourages applications from underrepresented groups. We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of their background.

More information on our D&I plan can be found here. BBC Studios puts sustainability at the heart of everything we do both onscreen and offscreen, including delivering against the BBC Group's science-based Net Zero targets. More information on sustainability at BBC Studios can be found here. We are proud to share that we are a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer and we strongly encourage applications from disabled people. If you meet the minimum criteria for this role and declare that you are disabled, we will ensure to advance you to the next stage.

If you require any reasonable adjustments in order to apply please contact us.

What Will You Gain From Working At BBC Studios?

• Flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance.
• 26 days holiday (plus an additional day which is a Corporation Day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days.
• A defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.
• Excellent career progression - access to courses, webinars, workshops and the opportunity to work in different areas of the organisation.

Package Description

Salary: Up to £72,000 plus London Weighting depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights. Contract type: Permanent role. Location: Office Base is London; Television Centre. This is a hybrid role and the successful candidate will balance office working with home working.