Design System Lead

About this role

Our Story Hello there. We’re Zopa. We started our journey back in 2005, building the first ever peer-to-peer lending company. Fast forward to 2020 and we launched Zopa Bank. A bank that listens to what our customers don’t like about finance and does the opposite. We’re redefining what it feels like to work in finance. Our vision for a new era of banking puts people front and centre — we’ve built a business that empowers everyone to aim high, every day, to move finance forward. Find out more about our fantastic offerings at Zopa.com ! We’re incredibly proud of our achievements and none of it would be possible without the amazing team here. It’s not just industry awards we’re winning, we’ve also been named in the top three UK’s Most Loved Workplaces. If you embrace unconventional challenges, are unafraid to think differently and are driven to make an outsized impact, you’ll thrive here at Zopa, so join us, and make it count. Want to see us in action? Follow us on Instagram @zopalife The Experience Design team is responsible for shaping the end-to-end customer experience across Zopa’s products. Within the team, the Design Systems function provides the foundations that allow product teams to move quickly while delivering consistent, high quality experiences. We’ve recently rebuilt our design system as part of our move to native, giving us a strong foundation for the future rather than a large legacy estate to untangle. This role is an opportunity to lead that next phase. You’ll own the design system as a strategic platform, helping us scale delivery, improve consistency, strengthen governance and unlock new ways of working through AI-assisted design and development. You’ll lead a small team and work closely with Product, Engineering and Design leaders to ensure the design system becomes a core enabler of how Zopa builds products in the years ahead. A day in the life:: • Lead and develop a team consisting of a Design Systems Designer and Motion Designer • Define and evolve the governance, processes and operating model for Zopa’s design system • Partner closely with Mobile Engineering to ensure design and code systems remain aligned • Collaborate with Product, Design and Brand stakeholders on system adoption and evolution • Review and prioritise requests for new patterns, components and system enhancements • Define and track measures of system health, adoption, consistency and impact • Help product teams move faster by creating scalable, reusable foundations • Balance hands-on design systems work with strategic leadership and organisational influence • Shape how AI-enabled workflows can leverage the design system to improve delivery speed and quality • Drive consistency across customer experiences while making thoughtful trade-offs where needed About you:: • You’ve led a design system or platform design capability within a product organisation • You’ve managed and developed designers and enjoy building high-performing teams • You bring strong systems thinking across tokens, components, patterns, documentation and governance • You have experience partnering closely with Engineering and understand how design systems translate into code • You’re comfortable working across native mobile experiences • You use evidence and measurable outcomes to guide prioritisation and decision making • You’re confident setting boundaries, making trade-offs and influencing senior stakeholders • You can balance technical depth with strong communication and stakeholder management • You’re able to bring clarity and direction in environments that contain ambiguity • You combine strategic thinking with a pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset Added bonus : • Familiarity with design-to-code pipelines and token architecture • Experience embedding accessibility standards within design systems • Practical experience using AI or automation to improve design workflows • Experience with tools such as Figma MCP, Claude or ChatGPT • Experience in scaling organisations that have grown through multiple stages of maturity At Zopa we value flexible ways of working. We value face-to-face collaboration and a good work-life balance. This hybrid role requires you to come to our London office 2-3 days a week. You'll also have the option of working from abroad for up to 120 days a year!* But no matter where you are, we’ll make sure you’ve got everything you need to thrive, both in your work and home life, from day one. *Subject to having the right to work in the country of choice Diversity Statement Zopa is proud to offer a workplace free from discrimination. Diversity of experience, perspectives, and backgrounds leads to better products for our customers and a unique company culture for our people. We are made up of nearly 50 nationalities, have a DE&I forum made up of Zopians wanting to make a difference and we are proud of our culture where everyone can bring their full self to work. Our approach to DE&I is reflected in our hiring process so please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments. Our approach to AI in interviews At Zopa, AI isn't something we're testing out — it's part of how we work every day. As a proud partner of Jobs 2030 , we're committed to building AI fluency across our workforce, and we expect Zopians to use AI as part of how they do their jobs. Because of that, we want to be transparent about how we think about AI use during our hiring process. Behavioural and competency-based interviews : please don't use AI . These conversations are designed to understand you — your experiences, your judgment, and how you've approached real situations. An AI-generated answer can't tell us that. What it can do is get in the way of us finding out whether we're the right fit for each other. Technical interviews: it depends on the role. Some technical stages actively welcome AI use, others don't. Your Talent Partner will let you know what's expected at each stage. Where AI is part of the assessment, we'll be interested not just in the outcome, but in how you used it – the tools you chose, your reasoning, and the decisions you made along the way.