Design System Designer - Mercari
Salary not provided
Minimum year of experience: 5
Mercari
Design System Designer
- Employment Status: Full-time
- Work Hours: Full Flextime (no core time)
- Office: Roppongi
About
Circulate all forms of value to unleash the potential in all people
The marketplace app was born out of a desire to help society thrive with finite resources. The team believes that by circulating all forms of value—not just physical things and money—they can create opportunities for anyone to realize their dreams and contribute to society. The aim is to use technology to connect people worldwide and help unleash everyone’s potential.
- See our Culture Doc for more information about mission and values.
Engineering Principles
Guided by core principles, the engineering team works with:
- Passion For The Product
- Grow Together
- Solve Through Mechanisms
- Collaborate Openly
For more details, see our Engineering Culture.
Role Overview
The design system team seeks a hands-on Design System Designer to support the creation, evolution, and governance of the design system across multiple product teams. This role blends UI craft, systems thinking, and strong collaboration with designers, engineers, and brand partners to create scalable, accessible, and cohesive experiences.
Responsibilities
- Design, refine, and maintain reusable UI components, patterns, and guidelines.
- Define and evolve design tokens (spacing, color, typography, etc.).
- Ensure platform consistency across Web, iOS, and Android.
- Drive accessibility and inclusive design to support WCAG-aligned standards.
- Work closely with engineers to ensure accurate implementation and consistency between design and code.
- Partner with product designers to support design system adoption and alignment.
- Collaborate with brand and product teams to ensure cohesion between brand identity and system architecture.
- Create and maintain clear documentation, usage guidelines, and examples.
- Improve contribution, versioning, and change-management processes for the design system.
- Lead workshops, training, and onboarding for effective design system usage.
- Audit products for inconsistencies and propose system-driven solutions.
- Reduce design and component fragmentation.
- Continuously evaluate the design system’s performance and future needs.
- Explore and implement AI tools (e.g., code-assist, generative UI) to enhance system creation and documentation.
- Identify opportunities where AI can accelerate design, audits, and documentation.
- Promote best practices for AI integration into design/development workflows.
Unique Challenges
- Balancing scalability, consistency, and usability while supporting multiple product teams and platforms.
- Driving alignment across designers, engineers, and brand partners as the system evolves.
Qualifications
Required
- 5+ years in product design, UI/UX, or a design system-focused role.
- Strong portfolio demonstrating systems thinking, component design, and visual craft.
- Deep expertise in Figma (variants, Auto Layout, tokens, libraries).
- Experience collaborating closely with front-end engineers.
- Strong understanding of accessibility, responsive design, and multi-platform workflows.
- Excellent communication skills; able to explain system logic clearly.
- Business-level English.
Preferred
- Familiarity with front-end technologies (React component libraries, CSS architecture, design token pipelines).
- Experience with multi-brand or multi-platform design systems.
- Interest in and practical experience with AI tools for design/system scalability.
- Business-level Japanese (written and verbal).
Language
- Japanese: A2 (preferred, optional)
- English: B2 (required)
About CEFR
Learn More
- Careers site
- Mercan
- Social media: X / LinkedIn
Recruiting Process
- Application screening
- Skill assessment (may be on HackerRank, GitHub, or other, depending on role)
- Interviews (number depends on role)
- Reference check (online references around the final interview)
- Offer
Equal Opportunity Hiring
The organization is committed to building an inclusive, diverse environment free from discrimination based on age, gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, physical disability, or any other background. Anyone who shares these mission and values is welcome to apply.