Staff Product Designer, Design Systems

About Ethos Ethos is a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale. With its robust three-sided technology platform, Ethos is transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers alike. Ethos offers instant, accessible products and a seamless online process that requires no medical exams and just a few health questions; it eliminates traditional barriers, making it easier than ever for everyone to protect their families. Ethos is redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten. About the role We’re looking for Ethos’ first Staff Product Designer, Design Systems to build and evolve the design system that powers our customer and internal experiences. This is a true 0→1 opportunity. Ethos is not yet “design-system mature,” and that’s exactly why this role matters: you’ll help bring structure to how we design and build UI, without slowing down product teams or over-engineering processes. You’ll partner closely with Product Design, Engineering, Brand/Creative, and Content Design to create a system that helps teams move faster while improving consistency, accessibility, quality, and trust. This role is a blend of strategy and hands-on execution. You’ll define what the system is, build it in Figma, help translate it into production-ready components and tokens with engineering, and set the operating model that keeps it healthy as Ethos scales into its next chapter. Duties and Responsibilities: Strategy Foundations 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. System Design Craft 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). Engineering Partnership 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. Governance, Adoption Enablement 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. Measurement Iteration 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). Qualifications and Skills: 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 co ... (truncated, view full listing at source)