Design System Designer in Cheltenham

Journey is a leading hotel marketing agency, revolutionising the luxury hospitality and travel industry through creativity, incomparable industry knowledge, and digital disruption. Working with the best luxury hotels and resorts in the world, empowering growth and increasing revenue through innovation, collaboration, and technology solutions.

At Journey, we will always have an entrepreneurial spirit. We started off as a team of six and have never forgotten our humble roots. To thrive you will need to embrace this mindset. We all roll up our sleeves, we help each other out, we admit if we are struggling, we lean on one another and we leave ego at the door. Everyone plays a part. We are a business of collaboration and sharing, be it ideas, time, skills, knowledge, energy or snacks...we are in it together. Our clients are considered part of our business and we treat them with the same inclusive respect and consideration.

Journey is on a mission to modernise hospitality through intelligent, connected technology. As our product suite expands, we need a unified, scalable design system that raises the bar for quality and accelerates delivery across every team. This is a UK‑based remote role. Applicants must be residents of and located within the UK for the duration of their employment.

What you’ll do:

• We’re looking for a contract Product Designer with deep design systems expertise to help consolidate, rebuild and evolve our system into a single, robust, enterprise‑ready foundation.
• You’ll work across our B2B and B2C platforms, partnering closely with designers, engineers, and product teams to establish the standards, components, tooling and governance that support consistent, high‑quality experiences.
• This is a focused, high‑impact role. You’ll bring order, structure and clarity to a complex product landscape, transforming fragmented UI patterns into a cohesive, scalable system that the whole organisation can rally behind.
• We’re looking for a systematic thinker with strong Figma mastery who can move fast, work independently, and deliver a modern, future‑proof design system.
• Audit existing product surfaces, UI patterns, component libraries and workflows to identify inconsistencies and priorities.
• Define the system’s foundations — architecture, naming, taxonomy, and design principles.
• Build and maintain design tokens, components, variants, documentation and clear usage guidelines.
• Use advanced Figma capabilities (variables, modes, component properties, auto‑layout, prototyping) to create a scalable, flexible system.
• Consolidate and migrate existing assets into a single governed library.
• Establish accessibility standards and ensure they’re embedded across the system.
• Partner with engineering to align design tokens, component architecture and frontend implementation.
• Create governance processes including versioning, contribution models, and change control.
• Ensure the system integrates cleanly into existing product team workflows and development pipelines.
• Support designers across squads to adopt and apply the system effectively.
• Advocate for system thinking and help elevate design quality across the organisation.

What you’ll bring:

• 5+ years in product design, with at least 1–2 years focused specifically on design systems.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating component design, documentation, system architecture and UI scalability.
• Deep expertise in Figma — from variables and modes to tokens, libraries, constraints and advanced component workflows.
• Strong understanding of design tokens, and how they translate into engineering frameworks.
• Experience working with frontend engineers on system alignment, component quality, and implementation details.
• Ability to audit, rationalise and restructure existing design patterns into scalable, coherent systems.
• Excellent communication skills — clear, structured, and able to articulate standards and rationale.
• Experience influencing adoption across multiple teams in a cross‑functional product environment.
• Solid understanding of accessibility and inclusive design.
• A balance of strategic thinking, systems architecture and hands‑on design execution.
• Highly autonomous — able to self‑manage, set priorities and deliver at pace.

About us:

Think of your role here as more than just a job; it’s about shaping your future, one hotel at a time. We’re a team of innovators, strategists, storytellers, and engineers, all with a few things in common. We love hotels, we get results, and we provide great online experiences for hoteliers and their guests. Our work can be challenging, but we’re firm believers that when you love what you do, you do it well.