Purpose of the Role
The Lead Designer owns user experience and the design system for the full AFS product portfolio - AFSVision's four lending functions, IRIS, Credit Risk Navigator, and the Pricing Dashboard - as the sole design function supporting eight Product Managers across the value stream. This role exists to make sure that speed under the new AI-first product development lifecycle does not come at the cost of a coherent, usable, and accessible experience for the lenders, credit analysts, and portfolio managers who depend on AFS's products every day. Success is measured by a design system that every product team actually trusts and uses, workflows that hold up under the complexity of commercial lending, and a steady stream of client usability evidence feeding back into the roadmap.
Scope of Responsibility and Authority
This role owns the creation and maintenance of design system and interaction standards for every AFS product. They are the design authority each Product Manager works with when framing, prototyping, and harvesting opportunities under the Product Development Lifecycle. The Lead Designer decides which new interaction patterns are promoted into the design system, which are sent back for rework, and the service level Product Managers can expect when a pattern needs to be absorbed or a prototype reviewed. This role has the authority to reject a prototype that forks a component, introduces custom CSS, or falls short of accessibility and workflow usability standards, regardless of the Product Manager's timeline. As the only design function reporting to the Chief Product Officer, the Lead Designer prioritizes and sequences competing design requests across all AFS lending functions and the Data & Business Intelligence portfolio, and escalates capacity constraints to the Chief Product Officer rather than absorbing them silently. Decisions that would change the design system's foundational tokens or components, commit design capacity beyond what a release can support, or affect the experience across multiple product domains at once are escalated to the Chief Product Officer. This role also operates within AFS's regulated environment, including FFIEC examination, SOC 2, and client audit obligations, so that auditability and accessibility are treated as design inputs rather than downstream concerns.
Core Responsibilities
• Define - the interaction standards, visual language, and design system that govern every AFS product.
• Own - the design system as a staffed service, publishing and holding to a service-level agreement for absorbing new components and reviewing prototypes, so it never becomes the reason a team ships a fork.
• Partner - with each Product Manager from the earliest discovery conversation, using AI to clarify intent, pressure-test assumptions, and draft interaction frameworks before a single frame is drawn.
• Refine - the working prototypes Product Managers build with AI-assisted tools, pressure-testing them against approved design-system components and tokens, and raising fidelity only as far as the underlying question requires.
• Govern - every new interaction pattern surfaced through prototyping, deciding what is promoted into the design system, what is reworked, and what remains disposable.
• Research - lead usability testing and workflow analysis with client users - lenders, credit analysts, portfolio managers - turning sessions into evidence Product Managers can act on, and facilitate discovery workshops that map end-to-end workflows.
• Harvest - participate in governance with the Product Manager and lead engineer to split validated prototype work into code that promotes as is, code that needs hardening, and patterns that must be contributed back to the design system before anything ships.
• Standardize - workflow and queue usability patterns that hold up across AFS's dense, data-heavy commercial lending screens.
• Author - in-line help and how-to content that reduces the support burden on complex workflows.
• Collaborate - with engineering to keep the code-first, versioned design-system package in lockstep with what actually ships to production, and with Product Operations on intake and prioritization of design demand.
• Communicate - design rationale, research findings, and system trade-offs clearly to Product Managers, engineering leads, and executive stakeholders.
• Ensure - that every shipped experience meets AFS's accessibility, security, and audit obligations, engaging risk and compliance partners early in the design process.
First 12 Months Outcomes: What Success Looks Like
Success in the first year is defined by establishing the design system as a trusted, staffed service rather than a set of files no one opens. That means Product Managers get consistent, timely design support across all product domains, prototypes reach clients without forked components, and usability evidence is a routine input to the roadmap rather than an afterthought.
• Publish and hold to a service-level agreement for the design system - covering new-pattern absorption and prototype review turnaround - reviewed quarterly with the Chief Product Officer and the Product Management team.
• Support prototype cycles for at least twelve validated opportunities across the eight Product Manager domains, with zero forked components or custom CSS in anything that reaches a client.
• Run usability testing with five to eight users per round across at least ten rounds, turning each session into a per-assumption verdict of supported, killed, or still unknown that Product Managers can act on.
• Promote at least eight new interaction patterns into the design system with full documentation, and retire or consolidate any pattern that duplicates an existing component.
• Facilitate discovery or workflow-mapping workshops with client users for at least six engagements in year one.
• Establish a documented intake and prioritization process for design demand across the four AFSVision lending functions and the Data & BI portfolio, with a recorded rationale for anything declined or deprioritized.
• Ship with zero accessibility, security, or audit issues attributable to design-defined functionality.
Ways of Working
• AI-first, by default. Reach for AI to clarify intent and pressure-test assumptions before a single frame is drawn. AI is how the team thinks faster and aligns earlier, not a shortcut around thinking.
• Systems over one-offs. Every prototype, pattern, and decision feeds back into the design system; fragmented, forked solutions stop here.
• Disposable flows, durable components. Screens, flows, and mock data are thrown away freely - components are promoted deliberately and documented.
• Refine to learn, not to impress. Fidelity is a deliberate choice matched to the question being asked.
• Evidence-driven. Usability findings and workflow evidence settle design debates, not opinion or seniority.
• Radical clarity. Standards, review decisions, and design rationale are written down, so no Product Manager is left to guess whether a pattern is approved.
• Collaborative but decisive. Design authority is exercised with input from Product and Engineering, not despite it, and disagreements are escalated quickly rather than left unresolved.
• Compliance by design. Accessibility, security, and audit requirements are first-class design inputs in a regulated banking environment.
Profile
The right person has led design for a complex enterprise product and knows what it takes to run a design system as a service rather than an unused reference deck. They are comfortable being the only designer in the room, setting standards for Product Managers across a wide swath of commercial lending functionality, and saying no to a shortcut that would fork the system even under deadline pressure. They are equally at home in a usability session with a bank's lending operations team and in a technical conversation with Engineering about what a prototype needs before it can harden into production code. They treat refining Product Managers' AI-assisted prototypes as core craft rather than a shortcut, and they take personal ownership of the coherence of the experience across the entire AFS portfolio.
Qualifications
• 7+ years of professional experience in product design, UX design, or interaction design within enterprise B2B SaaS environments, including experience owning a design system at scale.
• Demonstrated ability to run design as a staffed service for multiple product teams at once, including setting and holding to service-level commitments.
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted prototyping tools (for example, Figma Make, Cursor, or Claude Code) to refine and harden the working prototypes Product Managers build, not just annotate designs after the fact.
• Deep fluency in design systems: building them, governing them, and pushing back when work threatens to fragment them.
• Strong command of interaction design, accessibility standards, and component-level thinking across complex, data-dense enterprise products.
• Experience leading qualitative and quantitative user research - interviews, usability testing, workflow analysis - and translating it into design decisions Product Managers can act on.
• Background in commercial lending, banking, credit/loan financial services, or related fintech, or demonstrated ability to develop deep functional expertise in a complex and highly regulated domain quickly.
• Comfort operating in a regulated and audited environment, working within FFIEC, SOC 2, and client audit constraints.
• Experience partnering with Product Management and Engineering in a triad model, including deciding what prototype work promotes as is versus what needs hardening.
• Strong communication and storytelling skills, with the presence to align Product Managers, engineering leads, and executives around design decisions.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in UX Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, Graphic Design, Psychology, or a related field.
Work Environment & Physical Demands
Work is performed primarily in an office setting during normal business hours, with limited evening requirements for special events. Flexible schedule options are available in accordance with AFS company policy. This role requires high-frequency use of computer keyboards and monitors.
Position Description Disclaimer
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty listed above satisfactorily. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this role. This position description is intended to provide guidelines for job expectations and is not an exhaustive list of all functions, responsibilities, skills, and abilities. Additional functions and requirements may be assigned by supervisors as deemed appropriate.
This document does not constitute a contract of employment. AFS reserves the right to modify this position description and assign tasks as business needs require.
