Technical Lead (Design) at Old Mutual

Job Description:

• Maintain the design system, create, and update documentation, and library components.
• Establish design standards and principles accompanying the design system for scalability, efficiency, and consistency. 
• Evaluate and improve usability and accessibility of components, and be a champion for the user.
• Lead the design and implementation of visual languages and the tools, resources and documentations to support the system.
• Continuously conduct end-to-end audits of our UI, visuals and design system, come up with designs to solve for discrepancies and push the visual design system forward, while considering iOS, Android and Web design guidelines.
• Maintain and improve a contribution model to streamline the process of multiple autonomous product teams building components for one-off use cases, moving to systematized items.
• Identify, prioritize, and monitor task, progress of design, development, and documentation across team members.
• Present the Design System’s mission, library, and process to other groups, including product managers, content specialists, and other design and development teams throughout the enterprise. 
• Provide design leadership and guidance to teams around using shared patterns, and identify opportunities to create new patterns and components within their workstreams.
• Provide a thinking and implementation framework for accessibility and inclusion in both the design and development process.  
• Hold retrospectives & gather input from director-level peers of product design and development teams.
• Conduct regular one-on-one reviews with team members to identify successes, challenges, perspectives and preferences.
• Identify and nurture team growth and culture, identifying opportunities for team members to drive and lead system aspects.
• Follow Agile methodologies (SAFE/SCRUM / Kanban)
• Apply engineering principles for design, development, maintenance, testing and evaluation of software
• Client engagement to drive new products/ features and to ensure operational excellence
• Work closely with multi-skilled and cross-functional teams e.g., architects, developers, UX/UI designers, business analysts
• Ensure systems are scalable, responsive, robust and secure through monitoring and responding to application performance, stability and availability

Experience & Qualification Requirements:

• Matric, with a degree in Computer Science/ Engineering/ Mathematics or related
• 6+ years experience in one or more of: interaction design and/or information architecture.
• Advantage if experience on product management of web-based sites and/or applications, front end development, or business analysis
• 3+ years of experience in leading application development
• Certification in design systems UI & UX
• Native and responsive technology experience
• Experience with coding, low code platform applications
• Deep understanding of how to create usable, accessible, and modular designs that can scale to millions of users
• Proven track record of creating and managing impactful design systems and processes
• Knowledge of, and experience in web and mobile frameworks and technologies such as:
• Collaboration tools e.g., Confluence, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Slack
• Containerization technologies e.g., Kubernetes, Docker
• CI/CD technologies e.g.  Jenkins, Git, App Center / Bitrise /Azure DevOps
• AWS (preferred) or another cloud provider such as AZURE or Google Cloud Platform
• IaC technologies e.g. Cloudformation
• Mobile and API Testing Frameworks: TDD / BDD
• Architecture and Design: Event Driven Architecture / API First / Domain driven design
• Building self-contained, reusable, and testable modules, components and directives
• Familiarity with component-based architectures and design systems.
• Performing product analysis and development tasks that may require extensive research and analysis.
• Knowledge of responsive design principles and mobile-first development.
• Understanding of RESTful APIs and integration of backend services.
• Experience working with module bundlers, such as Webpack and Node.
• Familiarity with Microsoft's Azure DevOps suite (Repositories, Pipelines, and artifacts).
• Packaging libraries for consumption on NPM registries.
• Solid debugging and troubleshooting skills.
• Having a fundamental understanding of code quality and security checking tools such as  SonarQube.
• Fundamental knowledge of Design tokens.
• Fundamental knowledge of UX/UI principles.

Competencies Required:

• Customer focus
• Multi-functional team collaboration
• Data-driven and attention to detail and big picture
• Action Oriented
• Continuous Improvement Management
• Automation
• Problem Finding and Solving
• Conflict management and resolution
• High EQ