Ethos · 19 hours ago
Staff Design Systems Designer
United States
Full-time
Remote
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$126K/yr - $224K/yr
7+ years expEthos is a company dedicated to making life insurance faster and easier for families through technology and data science. They are seeking a Design Systems Designer to build and evolve their design system, ensuring consistency and accessibility while collaborating with various teams to enhance user experiences.
FinanceFinancial ServicesFinTechInsuranceInsurTechLife Insurance
Responsibilities
Establish the vision, principles, and roadmap for Ethos’ design system — balancing long-term scalability with near-term product needs
Audit the current system, product UI and identify the highest-leverage opportunities to standardize patterns and reduce inconsistency
Define a scalable token strategy (color, typography, spacing, elevation, motion, etc.) and a clear approach to theming and brand expression across products
Design, build, and maintain Figma libraries (components, styles/variables, templates, and patterns) that product teams can confidently use
Create high-quality component specifications with clear interaction behavior, states, responsive guidance, and accessibility considerations (focus, keyboard, contrast, error handling, etc.)
Ensure the system supports narrative, conversion-driven experiences (e.g., discovery flows, applications, underwriting moments, onboarding, policy management, lifecycle touchpoints)
Partner with Design System / Front-End engineers to translate the system into reusable code components and tokens (and help define component APIs that work for product teams)
Align on workflows that keep design and code in sync (component lifecycle, versioning, release notes, deprecations)
Drive pragmatic adoption: start where it matters most, ship iteratively, and build credibility through visible product impact
Build documentation that is actually used: guidelines, do/don’t examples, usage rationale, and decision records
Coach and enable partner teams (Product Design, Engineering, PM) on how to use the system effectively and when to extend it
Create a lightweight contribution process that enables product designers and engineers to propose, review, and add to the system
Define what success looks like and track meaningful signals (adoption, UI consistency, reduced design/development time, accessibility improvements, fewer regressions)
Partner with Research and Data teams where useful to connect system changes to outcomes (quality, user confidence, conversion efficiency)
Qualification
Required
7+ years of relevant experience, with a track record of setting system strategy, driving cross-team adoption, and raising the bar for design quality across an organization
Strong product design foundation with excellent visual and interaction craft — you care deeply about details and can scale that quality through systems
Hands-on experience building and maintaining design systems in Figma, including component architecture, documentation, and scalable patterns
Strong working fluency with modern front-end concepts (tokens, components, states, responsive behavior). You don't need to be an engineer, but you can collaborate closely with engineering and understand tradeoffs
Experience setting accessibility standards and shipping accessible components (WCAG-informed practices, inclusive design thinking)
Ability to thrive in ambiguity and build structure where it doesn't yet exist — you're pragmatic, opinionated, and iterative
Clear communicator who can align diverse stakeholders and influence without relying on formal authority
A portfolio that demonstrates end-to-end design system thinking and real-world impact (adoption, quality, speed, consistency)
Preferred
Experience building design tokens pipelines and/or working with tooling like Storybook or similar component documentation environments
Experience with video, motion, illustration/iconography, tone
Company
Ethos
Ethos makes getting life insurance instant and easy.
501-1000 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$413.96MKey Investors
SoftBank Vision FundGeneral CatalystGoogle Ventures
2022-01-24Series D· $7.46M
2021-07-21Series D· $100M
2021-05-11Series D· $200M
Leadership Team
Peter Colis
CEO and Co-founder
Vipul Sharma
Chief Technology Officer
Recent News
SV Angel
2025-11-28
Ethos Technologies Inc
2025-08-13
2025-07-31
Company data provided by crunchbase