design
Posted 3 weeks agoDirector, Product Design
at Dropbox
Remote
Responsibilities
- Define and drive the vision for Dropbox’s next generation design system, expanding it from a component library into a broader product
- Lead Design Systems and Design Technology as a center of excellence for front end product quality, interaction patterns, accessibility, implementation standards, and cross product experience coherence.
- Build and evolve reusable product patterns that drive core Dropbox experiences, including navigation, creation flows, sharing, permissions, collaboration, onboarding, search, content activation, notifications, settings, admin workflows, and AI assisted experiences.
- Own the full lifecycle of shared patterns and components, including discovery, definition, design, prototyping, engineering partnership, adoption, measurement, maintenance, governance, and deprecation.
- Create an operating model that makes adoption desirable rather than mandated, ensuring product teams see the system as a way to move faster, build better, and reduce duplicated effort.
- Lead and develop a team of designers, design technologists, and systems specialists, creating clear ownership, strong critique practices, high standards, and a culture of pragmatic systems thinking.
- Establish durable governance, measurement, and contribution models that help the system evolve continuously while maintaining quality, coherence, and accountability.
Requirements
- That means partnering deeply with product designers, engineers, product managers, researchers, brand, and leadership to create high leverage patterns that improve product coherence, accelerate execution, and raise the quality bar across web, mobile, desktop, and emerging AI native experiences.
- experience leading multidisciplinary teams, and the ability to operate across strategy, execution, governance, and organizational influence.
- Help Dropbox prepare for AI native product experiences by defining systems that can encode design knowledge, guide product decisions, and support more adaptive, contextual, and intelligent experiences over time. Requirements
- experience leading complex systems or platform initiatives at scale.
- Exceptional systems thinking, with the ability to see patterns across teams, products, platforms, and workflows, then turn those patterns into reusable experience infrastructure.
- Proven ability to influence senior cross functional partners, create alignment across ambiguous problem spaces, and drive horizontal product quality without relying on mandate alone.
- A clear point of view on the future of design systems, including how AI, design technology, design infrastructure, and reusable product logic should change how teams design and build.
- Experience leading design systems, design technology, front end platform, or product infrastructure teams in a large scale, multi product organization.
- Deep understanding of how to leverage content systems as part and parcel of the overall design system. •
- Experience building shared patterns for complex product domains such as collaboration, content management, permissions, search, productivity, AI, administration, or multi product ecosystems.
Experience
- 12+ years of product design, design systems, design technology, or front end experience, including significant
- 5+ years of people management experience, with a strong track record of leading senior designers, managers, design technologists, or multidisciplinary systems teams. Deep
Benefits
- In this role, you will lead the vision, strategy, and execution for the systems, patterns, and operating model that shape how Dropbox builds coherent, high quality, multi product experiences at scale.
- You should be equally comfortable defining a long term vision for the future of design systems, reviewing the details of a complex interaction pattern, partnering with engineering on implementation quality, and helping senior leaders understand where the product
- A strong point of view on the future of design systems, including how AI, design technology, and reusable product logic should evolve the way teams design and build. Compensation US Zone 1
- US Zone 2 $235,600 — $318,800 USD US Zone 3 $209,400 — $283,400 USD
Additional details
- Dropbox’s Design team is looking for a Director of Product Design to define the next generation of product experiences and infrastructure for Dropbox.
- We are building a modern system that can support a broader portfolio of products, accelerate product teams to achieve product market fit, improve front end quality, and create durable patterns for the most important product experiences across Dropbox.
- You will lead the team responsible for turning repeated product needs into reusable
- experience infrastructure: interaction patterns, product frameworks, design primitives, implementation standards, and adoption models that make it easier for teams to build excellent Dropbox experiences.
- As Director, you will oversee the evolution of Dropbox’s design system into a next generation design and technology platform.
- This includes the foundational system of components, tokens, accessibility standards, and documentation, but also the broader lifecycle of product patterns: how they are identified, designed, validated, built, adopted, measured, improved, and eventually deprecated.
- You will help move the team from a reactive model, where design systems patternize work after the fact, to a more proactive model, where the team helps shape core product experiences from the beginning.
- You will also establish Design Systems and Design Technology as a center of excellence for front end product quality.
- This team should not only define what good looks like, but help build it.
- The ideal candidate is a systems minded design leader with excellent product judgment, strong craft standards, deep