Senior Design Technologist

Company Overview

Datacom partners with organizations and communities across Australia and New Zealand to positively impact lives and assist organizations in leveraging technology to innovate and expand.

Role Overview

The Senior Design Technologist operates at the crossroads of design systems thinking and engineering delivery. In collaboration with design leadership, researchers, and engineering teams, this role is responsible for the technical management of the design system, ensuring it remains the authoritative reference throughout the organization. Duties include developing scalable component libraries, design tokens, UX guidelines, and production-ready UI components that streamline and unify product development.

This position requires a strong front-end engineering background combined with deep insight into design systems, bridging validated design decisions with executable code. Additional responsibilities involve advancing tooling, automation pipelines, and AI-enhanced workflows aimed at accelerating delivery and supporting scalable product development processes.

The core team is located in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, and while the preference is for these locations to facilitate in-person collaboration, flexible remote working arrangements support a healthy work-life balance tailored to team needs.

Key Responsibilities

• Maintain ownership of the design system as the definitive source for components, patterns, interaction flows, and UX guidelines.
• Develop and sustain production-ready UI components and scalable front-end patterns.
• Encode design decisions including tokens, interaction models, accessibility requirements, and layout rules into reusable structures.
• Create and update comprehensive documentation suitable for designers, engineers, and AI-assisted tools.
• Build and support automation pipelines and tools converting design decisions into functional code.
• Ensure front-end code adheres to quality standards, accessibility (WCAG), performance, and best practices.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to guarantee smooth integration between design systems and build processes.
• Iterate the design system driven by user insights, customer feedback, and research findings.
• Provide technical expertise in governance related to design and pattern standards.
• Investigate and integrate new workflows, front-end technologies, AI tooling, and design-to-code techniques to enhance efficiency.
• Disseminate knowledge to support the wide adoption of the design system across teams.
• Maintain high visual and interaction quality standards as the product scales.
• Contribute to standardizing approaches, tools, and processes within the design system discipline.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Minimum of 5 years’ experience in UI/visual design and/or front-end development.
• Proven background in building and managing design systems or component libraries at scale.
• Expertise in HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern frameworks such as React.
• Comprehensive knowledge of design systems, token architecture, component APIs, and documentation standards.
• Skill in translating design specifications into production-grade front-end code.
• Familiarity with contemporary tools such as Figma, Storybook, GitHub, MUI, and design token pipelines.
• Understanding of accessibility standards (WCAG), user-centred design practices, and information architecture.
• Experience working collaboratively in cross-disciplinary teams including designers, researchers, and engineers.
• Capacity to produce clear, structured documentation accessible to humans and AI-assisted systems.
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills to articulate technological and design decisions effectively.
• Bachelor’s degree in Design, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in AI-augmented or AI-driven product delivery settings.
• Knowledge of agentic AI workflows, orchestration, and AI-supported design-to-code pipelines.
• Familiarity with machine-readable documentation formats and AI context engineering.
• Background in SaaS or product-led companies.
• Awareness of CMS and CRM platforms.
• Experience optimizing front-end performance.
• Relevant certifications in front-end development, UX/UI design, or design systems.

Company Culture and Benefits

Datacom is a leading IT professional services provider in Australia and New Zealand with a dynamic and agile small-business atmosphere. The company values its people and fosters a supportive, inclusive environment featuring social events, relaxation areas, remote work options, flexible hours, and opportunities for professional growth. Employees are recognized and appreciated in a collegial and flat organizational structure offering ongoing challenges and new opportunities through cutting-edge technology projects.

The company is committed to inclusivity and strives to maintain a welcoming, fun, and supportive workplace for all employees.