The Role
Pearson is reimagining education for the AI era, and we need an exceptional visual design leader to help shape that transformation. As a Lead Visual Designer on the Design Systems team, you'll serve as the senior design voice establishing the visual foundation for Pearson's unified design system across our Higher Education product portfolio. This is a high-impact role where your design decisions will cascade across dozens of product teams and influence the experience of millions of learners and educators.In this role, you'll own the end-to-end visual design quality for our design system—from defining foundational design tokens and component specifications to establishing the visual language that makes our products feel cohesive, modern, and competitive in an AI-native education landscape. You'll work at both strategic and tactical levels: setting the creative direction for how our design system evolves while also designing production-ready components and templates that product teams can implement with confidence.
Beyond craft execution, you'll be a design leader within the team. You'll facilitate design critiques, mentor other designers, influence cross-functional partners through the strength of your work and communication, and represent design thinking in discussions with product management and engineering leadership. This isn't about executing within constraints—it's about defining what excellence looks like and building the design infrastructure that makes it achievable at scale.
What You'll Own
You'll own the end-to-end visual design quality for our design system—from defining foundational design tokens and component specifications to establishing the visual language that makes our products feel cohesive, modern, and competitive. You'll work at both strategic and tactical levels while serving as a design leader within the team.- Define and evolve the visual design language for our unified design system, establishing standards for typography, color, iconography, spacing, layout, and motion that work seamlessly across web and mobile platforms
- Design comprehensive, production-ready component libraries in Figma—from foundational atoms to complex organisms—ensuring each component is accessible, flexible, and documented for implementation
- Lead the visual design direction for major product redesigns, creating high-fidelity reference screens and templates for student and instructor experiences in our next-generation agentic learning platform
- Work closely with Creative Technologists to translate your visual designs into code (I.E. React components in Storybook), conducting visual QA and creating detailed motion specifications with timing, easing, and state transition behaviors
- Lead design critiques for the team, mentor other designers, and build influential relationships with product management, engineering leadership, and key stakeholders across Pearson, advocating for design quality through clear communication and compelling rationale
- Imagine the next generation of interaction patterns and contexts like voice user interfaces and multi-modal interactions (AR/VR) that support our product vision well into the future
About You
You're a senior designer who combines exceptional visual craft with systems thinking, collaborative leadership, and the ability to navigate complex organizational dynamics. You lead through influence rather than authority, building trust by demonstrating design value, showing respect for constraints, and finding collaborative solutions to complex problems.- 7-10 years of visual design experience with a portfolio that demonstrates exceptional craft in UI design, component-based design systems, and end-to-end product experiences across web and mobile platforms
- Deep, expert-level proficiency in Figma, including advanced component architecture, library management, and design token systems—you know how to structure Figma files for enterprise-scale collaboration and long-term maintainability
- Strong skills in motion design for product interfaces, with proficiency in After Effects, and/or Framer, and/or Principle (or similar tools) to communicate animation, timing, easing curves, and interaction behaviors
- Proven experience designing, building, or contributing to design systems at scale—you understand the full lifecycle and can identify when to enforce consistency versus allow flexibility, balancing design quality with engineering feasibility
- High ownership and effective communication across diverse audiences, from detailed critique sessions with designers to strategic discussions with executives, with strong judgment about when to maintain system consistency versus advocate for exceptions
What You'll Get
This is a defining moment for Pearson. You'll have significant latitude to define what visual excellence means for our products—this isn't a role where you execute someone else's vision. You'll be the senior design voice establishing creative direction, proposing new approaches, and shaping how design systems thinking evolves within the organization.- Strategic Design Impact: Your work will establish the visual and interaction standards for dozens of products and influence the daily experience of millions of users as we build the design infrastructure that will determine our competitive position in an AI-native education landscape
- Career-Defining Growth: Deepen your expertise in design systems leadership at enterprise scale, working on problems that challenge your craft, strategic thinking, and leadership capabilities
- Creative Ownership: Define creative direction and shape Pearson's visual evolution with lasting influence—your designs will become the reference standard that other teams build from, giving your work genuine strategic consequence
- Collaborative Environment: Work alongside talented Creative Technologists, UX Designers, and Visual Designers who share your commitment to craft, with regular opportunities for design critique, knowledge sharing, and problem-solving with product teams hungry for design leadership.
