Sr. Dir, Design Infrastructure

About GitHub: GitHub is the world’s leading platform for agentic software development — powered by Copilot to build, scale, and deliver secure software. Over 180 million developers, including more than 90% of the Fortune 100 companies, use GitHub to collaborate, and more than 77,000 organisations have adopted GitHub Copilot. Locations: In this role you can work from Remote, United States Overview:

We’re looking for a senior design leader to redefine what a design system is in an agent-native world. 

GitHub is looking for a Senior Design Director, Design Systems to lead the evolution of our design system into an AI-compatible, agent-ready platform. This leader will be responsible for transforming Primer from a traditional component library into a system that enables both humans and AI agents to generate high-quality, accessible, and cohesive user experiences. 

You will lead a multidisciplinary team of designers and engineers, with the opportunity to grow the team through open headcount, and drive alignment across design, product, and engineering. This role requires a leader who can operate with clarity, cut through complexity, and deliver systems that scale across one of the most widely used developer platforms in the world.

Responsibilities:

System Vision and Foundations

• Defines and leads the evolution of Primer into an agent-native design system. A platform of primitives, patterns, and guardrails that enables both humans and AI agents to generate high-quality, accessible, and cohesive experiences.
• Drives efforts to eliminate redundancy and reduce accumulated complexity, developing an opinionated system that is easier to use, generate from, and maintain.
• Partners with Engineering to ensure the system integrates into developer workflows and that design intent translates cleanly into code.  

Quality and Governance

• Advances the quality bar across GitHub experiences by building systems and guardrails in partnership with Design, Engineering, Product, and Marketing
• Establishes and enforces standards for consistency, accessibility, and usability across both human- and AI-generated interfaces.  

Cross-Functional Execution and Impact

• Drives alignment and delivery across Design, Engineering, and Product to ensure the system meets real product needs and accelerates development.
• Defines and tracks success through adoption, efficiency, and quality metrics, ensuring measurable business impact.  

Team Leadership and Growth

• Leads and scales a multidisciplinary team of designers, accessibility experts and engineers, leveraging open headcount to build a high-performing organization.
• Develops leaders and fosters a culture of craft, clarity, and execution.
• Proven ability to manage managers and build a strong leadership layer that drives team performance, growth, and accountability 

Qualifications:

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years experience in product, platform, or systems development 

• • OR Bachelor's Degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, or related field AND 10+ years experience

  • OR Master's Degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, or related field AND 8+ years experience

  • OR Doctorate in related field AND 6+ years experience

  • OR equivalent experience 

• 6+ years experience leading multidisciplinary teams across design and engineering, including managing managers

• Proven experience building or leading design-to-code systems or platforms that bridge design and engineering 

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated ability to simplify complex systems, reduce surface area, and make systems more opinionated and scalable

• Strong track record of driving cross-functional alignment across design, engineering, and product 

• Experience building systems that support AI-assisted or generative UI workflows 

• Experience working on developer tools or technical platforms 

• Experience scaling system adoption across large organizations

• Experience driving accessibility and inclusive design at scale 

  Compensation Range: The base salary range for this job is USD $160,200.00 - USD $425,000.00 /Yr. These pay ranges are intended to cover roles based across the United States. An individual's base pay depends on various factors including geographical location and review of experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant. At GitHub certain roles are eligible for benefits and additional rewards, including annual bonus and stock. These rewards are allocated based on individual impact in role. In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee's role. GitHub Leadership Principles:

GitHub values

• Customer-obsessed
• Ship to learn
• Growth mindset
• Own the outcome
• Better together
• Diverse and inclusive

Manager fundamentals

• Model
• Coach
• Care

Leadership principles

• Create clarity
• Generate energy
• Deliver success

Who We Are: GitHub is the world’s leading AI-powered developer platform with 150 million developers and counting. We’re also home to the biggest open-source community on earth (and 99% of the world’s software has open-source code in its DNA). Many of the apps and programs you use every day are built on GitHub. Our teams are dreamers, doers, and pioneers, leading the way in AI, driving humanitarian efforts around the globe, and even sending open source to Mars (and beyond!). At GitHub, our goal is to create the space you need to do your best work. We’re remote-first and offer competitive pay, generous learning and growth opportunities, and excellent benefits to support you, wherever you are—because we know that people flourish when they can work on their own terms. Join us, and let’s change the world, together. EEO Statement: GitHub is made up of people from a wide variety of backgrounds and lifestyles. We embrace diversity and invite applications from people of all walks of life. We don't discriminate against employees or applicants based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other differences. Also, if you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate! Apply To This Job