We are looking for a single-threaded leader to own an agent-first design system end-to-end: product vision, roadmap, engineering execution, adoption, and business outcomes. This is a builder-leader role. You will lead a team of PM, SDEs, MLEs, and front-end engineers, and partner closely with the AAIS UX Design organization - design and creative direction, and the design team itself, sit with the UX design leader; you own prioritization, delivery, and the business results.

The design system you will own rethinks how humans interact with AI. Rather than bolting conversational agents onto legacy interfaces, it places the human-AI relationship at the center of the design. It is built on the philosophy, called humorphism, that if people are going to work alongside AI teammates the way they work with human teammates, the interaction layer should be designed around how people have collaborated in work settings for decades, not around how they've clicked through software.

The work spans both proven agentic patterns and experimental approaches. Some components and patterns are ready for product teams to consume today. Others are on an innovation track where new AI-native interaction paradigms get invented before they are ready to be productized.

Adoption is a first-class workstream: making the design system easy for teams to adopt, resolving their blockers, and building the engineering relationships across AAIS and beyond.

You will set the roadmap, manage cross-functional stakeholders across AAIS and partner teams, and personally contribute to the technical direction of the system. You must be design-obsessed - someone with genuine taste who believes delight is a differentiator for any product experience - and comfortable operating at the intersection of design craft, front-end engineering, and product strategy.

You will be an engaged creative partner to the design organization: bringing a strong point of view, disagreeing and committing, and diving into the design conversation as readily as the engineering one, while leaving the design work itself to the designers. In its current phase of development, the role will require strong communication, product-leadership partnership, and research-grounded decisions.

Key job responsibilities
• Own the product vision and roadmap. Define what the design system builds next based on portfolio needs, customer feedback, and design research. Balance near-term adoption with long-term architectural bets (e.g., confidence/uncertainty primitives, earned context, reasoning transparency).
• Design the best, for the most, for the least. Do the best work for the most customers for the least specialized effort - every unit of work should reach a large number of people, not one targeted product. Resist one-off asks from individual apps; reframe them into patterns that generalize. Stop at doing the work for a team - do it with them and for everyone. Build coherence across the experience layer and a felt sense of product family, not siloed one-off features. This is the systems-thinking bar for the whole team.
• Balance velocity with room to explore. Be a force for the team's momentum, and plan deliberately for exploration where it counts - research, inspiration, and critique - so the hardest problems get the depth they deserve instead of being rushed. Know when a problem earns many explorations and when one will do.
• Lead the "Own It. Ship It. Together." collaboration model. The team operates through a paired model - named engineer + designer from day one, building simultaneously rather than sequentially. Sustain and scale this model as more teams adopt the design system.
• Drive platform adoption without mandates. The guiding principle is that adoption is earned through usefulness, not mandates. Grow adoption by releasing incrementally, validating with research, generalizing proven solutions, and directly supporting the engineering teams who take a dependency on the design system across AAIS and beyond.
• Steward the shared design system partnership. Own the integration layer that adapts proven patterns for product team consumption, and the working relationship that brings durable patterns into the shared AWS design system for broad adoption.
• Shape the long-lead investments that support builders. Determine the longer-horizon bets the design system needs to make to support how builders will work next - agents that compose UI, MCP-based integration, mobile-native, voice and multimodal. Own the roadmap for these before they're urgent.
• Partner with the design leader to hire, steer, and develop the team. The UX designers sit within the AAIS UX design organization; the front-end engineers sit with you. Partner closely with the design leader to hire, develop, and retain world-class talent at the intersection of design systems and agentic AI.
• Set and maintain a single quality bar. Establish governance for prioritization, release cadence, documentation standards, and design-token management - in partnership with design on the craft bar and owning the business and delivery bar yourself.

What Success Looks Like (First 12 Months)
• Design system adoption grows from 3 AAIS products to portfolio-wide coverage, with measurable reduction in per-team UX build cost.
• The design system's full offering is available to the Connect family at 65% or more through the shared design system - and key workflows are unlocked.
• The experimental innovation track is established, with early AI-native prototypes and a scoped set of long-lead builder investments (composing agents, MCPs, multimodal).
• Team health and retention remain strong through a smooth transition from the current interim structure.
• Strategic roadmap items (confidence primitives, earned context, reasoning transparency) have defined requirements and early prototypes.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field

- 8+ years of technical product management experience.

- 5+ years of people management experience with direct responsibility for hiring, performance management, and team development.

- Deep expertise in design systems, front-end engineering, or developer experience platforms.

- Track record of shipping developer-facing SDKs, component libraries, or platform products used by multiple teams.

- Strong technical fluency - able to make architecture decisions, review code, and engage deeply with engineers and designers on implementation tradeoffs.

- A strong sense of craft and taste, and a desire to raise the bar - willing to invest more effort now for work that scales better later, rather than always optimizing for speed.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Experience managing a team of engineers and scientists

- Experience building for AI/ML or agentic applications - understanding how LLM-driven interfaces differ from traditional UIs.

- Interest in, or experience with, how design systems adapt to vibe coding and agent-readable design systems is a strong plus.

- Genuine enthusiasm for design and visual culture - you care how a product feels to use, not just whether it works, and you can articulate why you prefer one well-made product over another.

- Demonstrated ability to manage a horizontal platform team serving multiple product consumers with competing priorities.

- Experience with the React ecosystem, Figma design tooling, and design token pipelines.

- Background in human-computer interaction, interaction design, or UX engineering.

- Familiarity with AWS services and the Cloudscape design system.

- Comfort operating in a fast-moving, highly ambiguous environment where the team is inventing new interaction paradigms for agentic AI.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

USA, NY, New York - 219,100.00 - 296,500.00 USD annually

USA, WA, Seattle - 199,200.00 - 269,500.00 USD annually