Remote Product Designer

Principal Product Designer Location: Remote UK Contract: Permanent Hours: 37.5 hours (Core hours 10:00am - 2:00pm Monday - Friday) We're here to help those who teach. At Twinkl, we’ve been providing educators across the world with high quality, trusted teaching and learning resources for over a decade now. The digital product team is dedicated to creating innovative and engaging digital experiences for children and educators. We’re looking for an experienced Principal Product Designer to own the direction of our design system. The system spans customer-facing and B2B products across web and mobile, and it is the lever that lifts quality, consistency and delivery speed everywhere at once. Ongoing projects/how you’ll spend your day: ~ Design system direction and governance: Define what the design system is for, what it covers and where it stops, and turn that into design principles and a roadmap other teams can plan against. Building the system: Design and ship the system itself, hands on. Components, composed modules and page templates, built for the real range of states, breakpoints, themes and content that Twinkl’s products throw at them. Own the token layer, from foundations through to the semantic tokens product teams actually use, and resolve the intricate edge cases nobody else has been able to close out. ~ Work alongside engineering on the coded implementation so design and code stay one system rather than two, run contribution and office-hours forums, write the guidance, and make it easier to use the system than to work around it. Accessibility and inclusion as a system property: Challenge design and technical assumptions that would exclude educators or learners, and hold the standard in reviews. ~ Frame the underlying user problem precisely, so the system solves it once for everybody. ~ Define the measures that show whether the system is working, including adoption, design and code parity, drift, detach rates and time saved on delivery. Use that evidence to decide what to build next, what to retire, and where to push back, and build the narrative that helps senior stakeholders see the trade-offs. ~ End-to-end design on high-stakes work: Take the hardest journeys yourself, from problem framing through to implementation-ready specification and prototypes. This is where new patterns get proven before they enter the system, and it keeps the system honest about what shipping actually requires. ~ Coach designers and engineers on using and extending the system well, review their work, and advocate for design across the organisation. Judge when a component belongs in the system and when it should stay local. ~ Be Detail-Oriented: Hold a very high bar on craft, naming, documentation and consistency, because in a design system a small error is inherited by every product that uses it. ~ Manage Projects Efficiently: Run system work alongside product delivery, sequencing it so teams are never blocked waiting on a component, and estimating honestly. ~ Thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment, adapt when priorities shift, and stay open to being shown a better answer. Bachelor’s degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field. ~ At least 8 years of experience in product design focused on user-centred design projects across web and apps, preferably education technology or related industry. ~ At least 3 years defining, setting and governing a design system, including its scope, principles, contribution and review model, versioning and deprecation. ~5+ years hands-on delivery of design system components, modules and templates, in production and in use by other teams. ~ Demonstrable experience of design tokens and theming, and of keeping a design library and its coded implementation in step. ~ Proficiency in Figma, including variables, component properties and library management, plus enough fluency in front-end code to work credibly with engineers on the implementation. ~ Practical experience of AI tools such as Claude in design work, for example drafting component documentation, auditing a library for inconsistencies, or scaffolding prototypes, with sound judgement about where their output needs checking. ~ Strong portfolio showing the system you built, how it was governed, and the adoption it achieved, alongside your product design process and final designs. ~ An understanding of the EdTech landscape, gamification, and emerging technologies such as AI is a plus. This will help us to understand any modifications we may need to make to support you throughout our selection process. In return for everything you can bring, we can offer you an exciting role in a fast-growing and dynamic business, with plenty of career opportunities. A friendly, welcoming and supportive culture. Diversity, inclusion and belonging - our Employee Network Program includes working groups for LGBTQ+, People of Colour, Disabilities (visible and invisible), Women in Tech and Working Parents. From day 1 - Westfield Health, 33 annual leave days per year (pro-rata) inclusive bank holidays, a "Me" day each year, a charity day each year, flexible working policy with opportunities to work from home and Twinkl subscriptions. Quarterly company awards programme Seasonal events Referral scheme Company sick pay after 3 months of service After probation - cycle-to-work scheme Long-term service reward - Life insurance, enhanced pension contribution, enhanced maternity pay, enhanced adoption pay and enhanced paternity pay, long service award, long service annual leave