Title: Design Systems Lead (Product Design)
Duration: 6-months (possible extensions)
Type: Contract
Havas is looking for a Senior Designer specializing in Design Systems to lead the design, documentation, and evolution of scalable component libraries to be used by global teams.
In this role, you’ll collaborate with a passionate group of Strategists, UX Designers, Techies and Digital Creatives to craft compelling digital experiences. If you’re imaginative and dedicated, crave collaboration, thrive on solving complex creative challenges, and have a keen eye for detail – we’d love to hear from you.
Who You Are
- A design systems specialist with strong product design foundations
- An imaginative designer who values usability as much as visual aesthetic
- A strong communicator who thrives in fast-paced agency environments.
- A systems thinker who understands how design connects to code, content, and CMS platforms
- A seasoned professional, experienced navigating corporate environments and communicating with senior stakeholders
What You’ll Do
- Partner with clients to design, evolve, and scale global design systems, including components, patterns, tokens, and guidelines.
- Translate complex business and user requirements into intuitive, visually compelling, and scalable design solutions.
- Create accessible, reusable, and implementation-ready components that support consistency across products and platforms.
- Develop and maintain clear design system documentation to enable adoption across global teams.
- Collaborate closely with engineering teams to align design systems with front-end frameworks and CMS platforms (AEM experience is an asset).
- Work cross-functionally with strategists, developers, and product owners to deliver high-quality user experiences.
- Serve as a design systems subject matter expert in client engagements and workshops.
- Present design recommendations with confidence and communicate complex design concepts in a clear, client-friendly manner.
- Champion user-centered design, accessibility standards, and design best practices at scale.
What You Bring
- 8+ years of UX experience in an agency or consulting environment
- Portfolio of work including both marketing/content related projects and complex, interaction-rich interfaces, and Design System Documentation
- Leads end-to-end UX strategy and design across complex digital projects
- Strong, confident presence with the ability to lead client conversations and manage stakeholders effectively
- Strong design systems experience (creation and maintenance)
- Proficient in Figma
- Hands-on with IA, user flows, wireframes, and UX documentation
- Experience creating products, apps, or websites from the ground up
- Comfortable leading workshops, design sessions, and stakeholder presentations
- Works closely with cross-functional teams (PM, dev, design, strategy)
- Mentors junior designers and supports team delivery
- Contributes to project planning, scoping, and new business (RFPs, proposals)
- Familiar with accessibility standards, responsive design, mobile UX, and content strategy
Additional Information
This role represents an active vacancy at Havas. You will be joining a collaborative, growth-oriented environment where ideas are encouraged and career development is supported. The base hourly range for this position is CAD 65-85 with final compensation determined based on factors such as work location, skills, experience, and background. Havas uses artificial intelligence-enabled tools to support certain aspects of the recruitment process. All hiring decisions are made by our recruiting and hiring teams.
Why Join us?
We are deeply committed to investing in the professional development of our team members, providing ample opportunities to expand skills, take on diverse challenges, and contribute to high-impact projects. Our passion for what we do drives us. Joining our team means being part of a culture and organization that prioritizes growth, innovation, and the pursuit of excellence...not to mention you would make some pretty cool new friends!