Senior Product Designer, Design Foundations

Overview Senior Product Designer, Design Foundations — New York, NY The mission of The New York Times is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. The company supports independent journalism and aims to deliver high-quality journalism across print, digital, audio, and apps. The role supports design foundations and systems across web and app experiences within the Games team, contributing to consistency, quality, and scalable design patterns. Mission Overview & Responsibilities: The Games team (behind Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, the Daily Crossword, and more) seeks a Senior Product Designer to establish and evolve design foundations and systems, enabling reusable interface patterns and opportunities for consistency and quality while designing complex features. In this role you will collaborate with multiple teams, applying UX, interaction, and visual design to create solutions that work across games and surfaces, align with brand, and meet accessibility standards. You will partner with the Games Web Platform Product Manager and Engineering to understand technical constraints in a legacy codebase, drive convergence on shared components and tokens, and improve design-to-engineering handoff. You will articulate design rationale and present work to stakeholders to ensure the design system provides clarity, consistency, and efficiency. We seek someone who obsesses over details, defines design standards and shared systems with rigor, and elevates quality and accessibility across the organization. Senior Product Designers at The Times are trusted contributors who deepen expertise in a skill set, delivering work that helps the team meet its goals with clarity, sophistication, and playful experiences. This is a hybrid role based in our New York City office. Responsibilities Co-own the platform-focused design systems roadmap with the Games Web & App Platform PM and engineering leads, identifying where foundational work (tokens, components, typography, layout) unlocks future product velocity. Contribute to and maintain Figma libraries and engineering documentation that map to our implemented component libraries, ensuring designers and engineers work from the same source of truth. Audit existing web and app experiences and component libraries to identify opportunities for consolidation, improvement, and systemization. Define and monitor design system health and adoption, identifying areas where teams may need guidance or additional support. Champion responsive, system-first design practices across the Games mission. Provide guidance to designers using the system, including critiques, pairing, and improving documentation so the system remains clear and useful across different games and surfaces. Develop information architecture for complex user journeys and create functional prototypes of proposed UX solutions. Anticipate and solve for different entry points, exit points, system states, and user states in proposed interactions. Produce production-ready design deliverables and partner with engineers to ensure accurate implementation. Be the standard-bearer for design quality across Games surfaces and system contributions. Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission. You will report to the Executive Director of Product Design for Games. Qualifications Basic Qualifications 4+ years of relevant experience in cross-functional teams. 2+ years experience on design systems or platform/foundations work (components, tokens, patterns, or similar). A portfolio showing thought process and finished design work. Experience collaborating with engineers to implement design systems or component libraries. Demonstrated experience building, maintaining, and applying design systems with engineering. Fluent in UX design best practices and usability principles that scale across mobile and web. Working knowledge of accessibility and inclusive design for systems (typography scales, contrast, motion, semantics). Proficient in Figma or equivalent software. Understand constraints and opportunities of technologies used to build modern digital experiences. Preferred Qualifications Experience leading or contributing to a design system spanning web and native app surfaces. Experience shaping team design practices (crits, documentation, templates) toward responsive, system-first work. Experience collaborating on foundational refactors with platform or infrastructure teams (e.g., typography or color system overhauls, or migrations to new component libraries). Comfort with engineers and understanding implementation tradeoffs—codified design intent through design tokens, component APIs, and reading specs. Experience documenting and delivering UI screens and specifications to engineers. Strong interaction design skills to communicate intent. Experience facilitating discovery sessions with stakeholders and cross-functional teams. Advanced visual design skills (typography, hierarchy, layout). Passion for big picture thinking and micro-interactions. Interest in puzzle games and The Times mission. Compensation and Benefits: The annual base pay range is $120,000 – $145,000 USD. Depending on role and location, variable pay such as bonuses and stock may apply. Benefits may include medical, dental, vision, FSA, 401(k), paid time off, paid sick leave, parental leave, tuition reimbursement, and professional development programs. Details vary by location. Equal Opportunity and Compliance The New York Times Company is committed to equal employment opportunities. We do not discriminate on protected characteristics and comply with applicable laws. EEOC poster is available here. The company provides reasonable accommodations as required by law. Applicants may request accommodations during the application process. We encourage a diverse workforce and invite applicants from all backgrounds to apply. For information about privacy practices for job applicants, see The New York Times privacy notices. Please beware of fraudulent postings; legitimate opportunities are accessible through The New York Times careers site. #J-18808-Ljbffr