NOTE: This is a FULLY remote role, but the candidate must be within EMEA to collaborate with their team, peers, and internal customers. You do not have to be in the specific country or city shown in this listing, but please only apply if you are physically based within EMEA.

Trusted by 20,000+ property managers worldwide, Hostaway is an industry leading, AI-powered vacation rental management platform designed for professional short-term rental operators. Hostaway brings everything together for greater efficiency and faster growth.

Profitable, high-growth, and the first short-term rental Property Management System unicorn 🦄. Join us at our most exciting stage yet! Learn more about our recent valuation and story here.

About the role

As the owner of our design system, you will define the vision, strategy, roadmap, and execution of a system that serves as the backbone of our platform. You will partner closely with design and engineering to build components, patterns, documentation, and workflows that drive quality, consistency, and speed across the product.

This is a staff-level role with broad ownership and influence. You will be responsible for ensuring design system excellence across the organization, while also working on end-to-end product features. You will also play an important role in exploring and integrating AI tooling into our design workflows and design system practice to improve output, efficiency, and scalability over time.

What you’ll do

• Continue the development of our design system: Lead and own the strategy, roadmap and development for our design system, currently in Figma. Collaborate across teams to support implementation. Evolve of our design system by integrating AI-tooling (e.g. Claude Code), skills and agents to improve design output. Additionally, stay on the cutting edge of AI advancements, ensuring the system scales and adapts to future needs.

• Forge the Bridge Between Design and Engineering: Develop and implement new collaborative workflows to bring our design and front-end teams closer. You will define the strategy for the design team to contribute to the design system, currently in Figma, and, looking ahead, to production and future processes.

• Develop and Document: Design, build, and maintain a comprehensive library of reusable components using atomic design principles, patterns, and guidelines. Create clear, accessible documentation that will empower our teams to build efficiently and consistently.

• Drive Adoption and Consistency: Be the primary advocate for the new design system, providing the training and support necessary to embed it across the organization.

• Contribute to and own product features: Actively participate in the end-to-end product development lifecycle, applying your skills in user research, wireframing, prototyping, and high-fidelity design to deliver new features. In some cases supporting other designers and in other cases owning the feature end to end.

• Innovate and influence: Champion and pioneer the integration of AI into our design practice by researching and piloting new tools and methodologies. You will guide and inspire and mentor the team, fostering a culture of curiosity and systems thinking, and demonstrate the value of AI from initial research through to final production.

• Extensive Experience: A minimum of 8+ years in product design, with a strong track record of creating, scaling, and evolving design systems in product organizations.

• Design systems leadership: Proven ability to define strategy, set direction, and drive successful execution for a design system, while balancing long-term systems thinking with immediate product needs.

• Strong product design skills: Demonstrated ability to contribute to and own end-to-end product features, with a deep understanding of user-centered design principles and systems thinking.

• A Passion for Emerging Technology: A genuine curiosity and enthusiasm for the application of AI in the design process. While you don't need to be an AI expert, you should be eager to learn, experiment, and lead in this space.

• Technical Acumen: A strong understanding of front-end technologies (e.g., HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React) and a history of successful collaboration with engineers. Experience with component-based architecture is a significant plus.

• Visionary Leadership: The ability to define a clear vision for a new initiative, influence stakeholders, and guide teams through change.

• Exceptional Communication: The ability to clearly articulate complex design concepts and advocate for the long-term strategic value of investing in a design system and AI.

  If you are a builder at heart and are excited by the challenge of creating a world-class design system while leading a team into the future of AI-powered design, we would love to hear from you.

What we offer

• Competitive Compensation: We offer competitive pay based on market rates in the country of the applicant.

• 100% Remote: Enjoy the freedom to work from anywhere within your country of residence—be it a co-working space, your home office, or even your dining room table. The choice is yours. Just don’t ask to work in our office (we don’t have one).

• Equity: Every role in our company comes with valuable stock options in a fast-growing and profitable company. This ensures we all share in the company’s success.

• Values-Driven Leadership: Our Core Values are not just words we’ve written to make us feel good. We leverage them daily when making strategic and tactical decisions.

• Professional Growth: Our rapid growth offers unparalleled learning and development opportunities, along with a multitude of career advancement opportunities.

• Annual Paid Leave: The specific amounts vary by country and are aligned with country and/or contract-specific norms.

• Geographic Specific Benefits: As an international employer, we offer different country-specific benefits such as Health Insurance and Pensions in countries where these perks are customary. The specifics depend on the country of the applicant.

• Dynamic Team Culture: As a global company with team members in over 40 countries, our diverse and international culture fuels our innovation and creativity, providing a key pillar to our success (and making it a lot of fun to work here).

Thank you for your interest. If you apply for this role, you will receive an email from our Talent Acquisition team after your application has been reviewed alongside the qualifications for this role and the qualifications of others who have applied.