Principal Product Designer, Design Systems

About this role

QUICK SUMMARY

Bring multi-product, cohesive experiences to life and make them the most trusted among homeowners. Principal level. 7+ yrs required.

WHO WE ARE

Kin makes life simpler, more affordable, and better for homeowners — especially in the places where climate risks, rising costs, and outdated systems make it harder. We start with smarter homeowners insurance and expand to everything homeowners need to thrive.

Using data, technology, and thoughtful human support, we’re building products that are clear, fair, and help homeowners feel confident — so homeowners aren’t left behind when they need help most.

Founded in 2016, Kin is a remote-first employer with Kinfolk across more than 35 states. We serve customers in 14 states (and counting). Our disciplined growth, strong customer satisfaction, and focus on long-term sustainability fosters outstanding growth, attracts marquee investors, and earns recognition and accolades, including:

- Built In Chicago's Best Places to Work, Midsize Companies (2021-2026)

- Forbes' America's Best Startup Employers (2026)

- Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies

- Forbes’ Fintech 50 (2023-2026)

- Great Places to Work Certified (May 2024-May 2027)

Most importantly, we’re building Kin to be a place where people do meaningful work with real impact — for our customers, our communities, and each other. We're excited to tell you more about how you can contribute to our rapid growth, strong unit economics, profitability, and excellent customer ratings. To learn more about how we work and what we’re building, visit kin.com http://kin.com and see how we work https://www.linkedin.com/company/kin-insurance/life/kin/.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Kin's long-term vision is to become the most trusted platform for homeownership -- a connected ecosystem of insurance, financing, home intelligence, and services that feels like one product, not a collection of handoffs. Every new thing we build has to feel like Kin. The Principal Product Designer role exists to make that possible.

In the past six months, Kin has launched auto insurance, flood insurance, property tax protests, home financing, and more. Every one of those products has to feel cohesive. Right now, our design system is a collection of disconnected branches that limits what the team can build and consumes hours that should go toward craft and personality. This role exists to solve that. You'll own the token layer, establish Figma-to-code parity, define the contribution model, and make the system the easiest path to a consistent experience — across everything we build next.

This is a principal-level IC role. You'll work across a federated, domain-based org and drive adoption through influence. The work you do here has direct implications for how Kin scales — and as AI makes it cheap to ship something that just works, the way our products feel to use is increasingly the thing that sets us apart.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

- Using AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor), audit existing component libraries and live product experiences — mapping gaps, drift, and inconsistencies — to generate a data-backed plan to unify and streamline the system.

- Own and drive Kin's token architecture across color, typography, spacing, and motion, structured as primitive, semantic, and component tokens, as the single source of truth for design and code.

- Experience designing token systems that scale across different contexts -- internal tools, customer-facing apps, or multi-brand surfaces -- with an architecture that can flex without fragmenting.

- Establish and maintain Figma-to-code parity, partnering with engineering on the pipeline from design tokens to implemented, documented components.

- Introduce new components and patterns thoughtfully as Kin moves into new product domains, ensuring the system grows with intention rather than sprawl.

- Define the contribution model and governance — versioning, changelogs, intake, and quality bars — and implement automated guardrails that let teams extend the system without fragmentation.

- Build the single source of truth that replaces disparate tools as the canonical reference for Kin's design patterns.

- Advocate for accessibility in components so teams inherit it by default, using automated testing and AI-assisted audits to proactively identify compliance gaps.

- Partner across Product, Engineering, and embedded domain designers to make the system the easiest path to a cohesive, on-brand experience across every surface.

SUCCESS IN THIS ROLE

In your first 6–12 months at Kin, success is less about checking boxes and more about the impact you create. You’ll use your skills and judgment to take ownership of meaningful work, improve how we operate, and help move Kin’s mission forward. Along the way, you’ll deliver outcomes that make a real difference for both Kinfolk and the homeowners we serve.

By the end of your first year, you should feel confident in your role, trusted as an owner, and proud of the progress you’ve helped make.

- AI and people can both generate Kin-consistent visual design from one source of truth, with the token layer as its foundation.

- Engineering and design are aligned on a shared token structure, with a clear rollout approach for updating shared components without breaking downstream consumers.

- The contribution and governance model is documented, adopted, and holding — teams know how to request from and extend the system without routing around it.

- New product surfaces launching at Kin inherit consistency by default, rather than requiring design rework to bring them into compliance.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

- A track record of taking a design system from audit through architecture to adoption — you treat the system as a product, not a deliverable.

- Significant visual and product design experience, commonly 7+ years, with a meaningful stretch focused specifically on design systems work.

- Deep fluency in token arch

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