Product Designer — Design Systems (Figma)

The short version

Happydance builds career sites that people actually enjoy using. Underneath every one of them is Base — a single, token-driven design system that each customer's brand "dresses up in." One system, hundreds of possible brands.

Here's the unusual bit: our Figma file is production infrastructure. Variables sync straight from Figma into the codebase — the colour you name in Figma becomes the token the platform renders. When you publish, the product changes. We're looking for a designer who finds that exciting rather than terrifying.

What you'll do

• Own the Base design system in Figma — variable collections (colour modes with light + inverted values, typography scales, radius, layout), the component library, and the publishing discipline that keeps it all trustworthy.
• Design new blocks and components for careers sites: heroes, job cards and search, maps, FAQs, apply journeys, culture and team content — states, breakpoints, empty/error cases included.
• Translate customer brands into theme presets — take a brand book, a palette, or a live website and turn it into a full token set that re-skins the entire platform without breaking contrast, hierarchy, or accessibility.
• Keep design and code in lockstep — variable names and group structure map 1:1 to code tokens, so naming is a design decision with consequences. You'll work directly with engineers (and our tooling) to keep the round-trip clean.
• Design for accessibility first — WCAG 2.2 AA is the floor, not the ceiling: contrast (we care about APCA), visible focus, reduced motion, keyboard-first thinking.

What you'll bring

• Expert-level Figma variables, modes, and library management — you've run a published, multi-mode design system in anger, not just used one.
• A design-token mindset: systematic naming, semantic layers over raw values, and the restraint to change the system rather than detach an instance.
• Brand translation skill — you can slot wildly different brands into one structure and make each feel bespoke.
• Accessibility fluency — contrast, colour independence, focus and motion sensitivity are part of how you design, not a checklist at the end.
• Great collaboration with engineers — comfortable talking tokens, naming conventions, and trade-offs; happy that your work ships through a Git-based pipeline.

Nice to have

• Experience with white-label / multi-tenant products
• Recruitment marketing or careers-site experience
• Enough HTML/CSS literacy to read a token file without flinching
• Motion design sensibility