Lead Designer - Global Design System

As Lead Designer of the Common Design System at Manulife, you will play a key role in a Global Design System team responsible for scaling and maintaining the enterprise-wide design library that serves multiple business units across Canada, Asia, and the US. This system will enable consistency, efficiency, accessibility, and innovation across Manulife’s public, secure, and mobile digital experiences. You will partner closely with design, engineering, and product teams across regions to define the visual language, interaction patterns, and usability guidelines that ensure a seamless, high-quality experience for millions of users.

This role requires a deep expertise in design tokens, enterprise design systems, designing patterns and templates for CMS like AEM, accessibility, and design operations. You will align with others in regional design teams, the visual and interaction standards and enabling teams to work more efficiently and creatively. The ideal candidate has successfully worked on enterprise-wide design systems and understands the organizational, technical and cultural complexities of embedding a design system into the fabric of a global enterprise.

Position Responsibilities:

• Lead Design System library maintenance

• Leverage the use of design tokens to build components, patterns, templates in a scalable, enterprise-grade design system that supports Manulife’s digital transformation across all regions, advocating for design excellence, accessibility, and usability.

• Align to the visual language, interaction patterns, and documentation/usage guidelines that ensure a high-quality experience.

• Partner with other design leads, product designers, and engineering teams to align the requirements for components and patterns for the system.

• Manage community feedback and contribution requests as you partner with regional teams to understand their unique constraints and integrate their needs into the system.

• Secure buy-in from executives and practitioners alike, navigating organizational complexity and influencing decision-making at all levels.

Execution and Documentation

• Train, onboard and enable teams to fully leverage the design system, ensuring broad and sustained adoption.

• Design and maintain components, tokens, and patterns in Figma

• Creates variants, edge cases, responsive specs and accessibility integration (labels, focus, states)

• Partners with developers to ensure pixel-to-code fidelity

• Facilitate design reviews, audits, and contribution models, ensuring high-quality system evolution and usage.

• Support community engagement initiatives to drive system adoption across Manulife’s digital teams.

Framework Development & Governance:

• Contribute to the definition of design system governance frameworks with support from Marketing and IT partners to ensure the long-term sustainability, adoption and alignment to the guidelines of the design system.

• Build and nurture a global design system community, educating teams on best practices and fostering a culture of design system ownership

Required Qualifications:

• 5-7 years of experience in design, design systems, or enterprise product design, preferably within a global enterprise or multi-jurisdictional organization.

• Experience or training in design at a post-secondary, college or technical institution.

• Proven track record of working on an enterprise-wide design system within large, global organization.

• Deep expertise in UI/UX best practices, accessibility (WCAG), design systems, and design-to-development collaboration.

• Experience with design system operations.

• Experience working in complex matrixed organizations with multiple business units and partners.

• Expert level proficiency in English and Enterprise design tools and frameworks (Figma, Zeroheight etc.).

• Experience navigating multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and regulatory complexities in global design and content.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Background in IT lifecycle management is a plus

• Familiarity with Agile, Lean UX, and enterprise digital delivery models.

• Expertise in stakeholder management, influence, and communication skills

When you join our team:

• As part of our global team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

• We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.

• We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.

#LI-Hybrid

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact recruitment@manulife.com.

Referenced Salary Location

Salary range is expected to be between

If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact recruitment@manulife.com for the salary range for your location. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance.

Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact recruitment@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.