Senior Director, Product Design - Expedia Group Design System (EGDS)

At Expedia Group, we help travelers explore the world, one journey at a time. As a global travel company powered by passionate people, trusted partnerships, and leading technology, we connect travelers, partners, and advertisers through our consumer brands, B2B network, and travel advertising business.

Here, you'll do meaningful work that helps millions of people discover, book, and experience travel with more ease, confidence, and joy. Our five Behaviors-Traveler First, Think Big, Operate with Excellence, Ownership Mindset, and Succeed Together-help foster a supportive environment where people can grow their careers and have the flexibility, benefits, and support to do their best work. Join us and build for travelers everywhere.

Locations:  London, New York, Seattle, Austin, San Jose / San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Montreal, with other EG Locations up for discussion.

The Senior Director, Product Design - Expedia Group Design System (EGDS) leads the cross-brand, multi-platform design system that powers consistent, accessible, and scalable experiences across Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo, and Orbitz, on web, iOS, and Android. Reporting to the Senior Director of AI Experiences within Experience Design, you will own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for EGDS, lead the team that designs and governs it, and drive its evolution into a machine-readable foundation that powers AI-assisted design-to-code and emerging agentic experiences. You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Program, Content, and Accessibility to raise the quality bar, accelerate delivery across hundreds of surfaces, and make the design system a force multiplier across the company.

About the Role

Expedia Group is looking for a Senior Director to lead the Expedia Group Design System (EGDS), the cross-brand, multi-platform system that powers consistent, accessible, and scalable travel experiences across Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo, Orbitz, and our Brand Expedia surfaces, on web, iOS, and Android.

This is a senior design leadership role at the intersection of design systems infrastructure and the next generation of AI and agentic product experiences. You will own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for EGDS, lead the team that designs and governs it, and drive its evolution from a library of platform components into a machine-readable, versioned foundation that can power AI-assisted design-to-code. You will be accountable for the quality, cohesion, and adoption of the system, and for making EGDS a force multiplier for design and engineering velocity across the company.

You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Program, Content, Accessibility, and brand design leadership, and you will play a central role in shaping how our design system supports agentic surfaces such as the conversational and agentic design system (CCUI).

What you will own:

• Vision and strategy. Set the multi-year direction for EGDS across foundations, components, tooling, and governance, aligned to Expedia Group's goals of higher execution velocity, reduced platform sprawl, and AI-native ways of working.

• Foundations. Lead the strategy for design tokens (foundation, semantic, and feature layers), theming (light, dark, brand, and loyalty), motion, typography, color, spacing, layout, navigation, and content foundations.

• Motion system. Establish and mature the EGDS motion system, including motion tokens, easing and duration standards, and reduced-motion support, so motion is consistent, accessible, and brand-aware across platforms.

• Component tiers and governance. Own the Core and Team tier model, the contribution and review process, and the quality bar that keeps components consistent across Figma, web, iOS, and Android.

• Accessibility. Hold the system to WCAG 2.2 AA and the Expedia Accessibility Guidelines (ExAG), and make accessibility a built-in property of the system rather than a downstream check.

• AI-native evolution. Drive the shift toward a schema-driven, machine-readable EGDS that supports AI-assisted design-to-code, Code Connect, and agentic surfaces, in partnership with the teams building generative and agentic tooling.

• Tooling and developer experience. Guide the roadmap for EGDS tooling, including Figma plugins (Discover, Themer, Tokenizer, Auditor, Syncer), the EGDS MCP, Storybook, and the documentation ecosystem.

• Adoption and impact. Define and track the metrics that matter, including cross-platform consistency, component adoption, time to build or update a component, and design-to-development handoff efficiency.

• Team leadership. Build, lead, and grow a high-performing team of design system designers, and develop the talent, structure, and rituals that let the team scale with the business.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and communicate a clear, compelling EGDS strategy and roadmap, and secure alignment and investment from senior design, product, engineering, and finance stakeholders.

• Lead a multidisciplinary design system team, setting direction, coaching managers and individual contributors, and creating the conditions for high-quality, high-velocity work.

• Partner with EGDS Product, Engineering, and Program leadership to plan and deliver against a shared roadmap, balancing enterprise quality with speed.

• Champion consistency and brand expressiveness at the same time, so brands can differentiate through tokens and theming without fragmenting the system.

• Represent EGDS in cross-EG forums, influence experience and platform strategy, and drive adoption across brands and lines of business.

• Establish governance, standards, and contribution models that scale, and resolve trade-offs between centralization and team autonomy.

• Guide the integration of EGDS with adjacent systems and platforms, including Shared-UI, Experience API, and the broader Experience Platform.

• Partner with AI and agentic product teams to ensure EGDS foundations and primitives serve emerging conversational and agentic experiences.

• Set and uphold the accessibility, performance, and quality bar for everything the system ships.

• Report on the health, adoption, and business impact of the system to senior leadership.

What you will bring:

• Extensive experience in product design, with significant time spent leading design systems at scale across multiple brands and platforms (web and native).

• A track record of leading and growing design teams, including managing managers, in a large, matrixed organization.

• Deep expertise in design system foundations: tokens, theming, componentization, motion, typography, layout, and accessibility standards such as WCAG.

• Strong understanding of how design systems are built and consumed across web (React), iOS (SwiftUI), and Android (Kotlin), and fluency working closely with engineering.

• Demonstrated ability to set strategy, build roadmaps, and influence senior cross-functional stakeholders across design, product, engineering, and finance.

• Experience defining and using metrics to drive adoption and measure the impact of a system or platform.

• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to make a complex system legible to executives and practitioners alike.

Leadership Competencies:

• Sets vision and strategy, and connects the work of the system to company outcomes.

• Leads through others, developing managers and designers and building durable team capability.

• Balances quality and speed, and makes clear, well-reasoned trade-offs.

• Builds trust and alignment across functions and brands.

• Operates with a bias toward measurable impact and continuous improvement.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience in product design or design systems, with 5+ years in senior leadership roles managing multi-disciplinary teams.

• Bachelor’s degree in Design, HCI, User Experience, or related field (or equivalent experience).

• Deep expertise in design systems — you have built, scaled, or significantly evolved a design system in a large, complex organization.

• A strong communicator and executive-level influencer who can represent the work, rally stakeholders, and make the case for system investment.

• Experienced managing teams that span both design and engineering output — you understand how systems are built and maintained across platforms.

• Passionate about the craft of systems thinking, with a sharp eye for quality and a bias toward simplicity and scalability.

• Comfortable operating at the intersection of vision and execution — equally at home in a strategy session and a component review.

• Energized by external representation: you enjoy speaking at conferences, publishing thinking, and building community around your work.

• Familiar with how AI and automation can enhance design workflows, documentation, and contribution pipelines — and excited to push that forward.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience evolving a design system toward AI-assisted design-to-code, schema-driven or machine-readable components, or agentic and conversational UI.

• Familiarity with Figma at scale, including variables, Code Connect, and design system plugin ecosystems.

• Background or strong working knowledge in motion design and the creation of a motion system.

• Experience in travel, e-commerce, or another large-scale consumer domain.

Expedia Group is proud to offer a wide range of benefits to support employees and their families, including medical/dental/vision, paid time off, and an Employee Assistance Program. To fuel each employee’s passion for travel, we offer a wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership. View our full list of benefits. 

Starting pay for this role will vary based on multiple factors, including location, available budget, and an individual’s knowledge, skills, and experience. Pay ranges may be modified in the future.

Benefits and perks

Expedia Group offers benefits and perks designed to support employees and their families, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, an Employee Assistance Program, wellness and travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and International Airlines Travel Agent Network (IATAN) membership. Learn more about life at Expedia Group at https://careers.expediagroup.com/life.

Accommodation requests

Expedia Group is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruiting experience. If you need an accommodation or adjustment due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please submit a request at https://expedia.service-now.com/askeg?id=job_accommodation.

About Expedia Group

Expedia Group includes three flagship consumer brands - Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo - along with a leading B2B travel business and travel advertising offerings. Across our brands and business, we help travelers explore the world with confidence and ease.

Important notice

Employment opportunities and job offers at Expedia Group will always come from Expedia Group's Talent Acquisition and hiring teams. Never share sensitive personal information unless you are confident of the recipient. Expedia Group does not extend job offers via email or messaging tools to individuals with whom we have not made prior contact. Our email domain is @expediagroup.com. The official place to find and apply for roles is https://careers.expediagroup.com/jobs/.

Equal Opportunity