Lead Designer

Job Posting Title:

Lead Designer

Req ID:

10112007

Job Description:

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Why Us

Building the scalable future of Disney’s Sports and Entertainment ESPN business: DE&E Designers are creating and building the foundation for our digital future through thoughtful solutions that meet the needs of partners across the organization.

Reach and Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – ESPN Digital Products, ESPN Streaming, ESPN Fantasy, and more.

Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

About The Team

The Disney Entertainment & ESPN (DE&E) Technology Design team thinks beyond what is possible today. They discover, disrupt, and chart a course to where our fans and consumers will be next. Design brings the Disney magic to life by building digital customer experiences via the entire portfolio of both consumer-facing products and internal products and tooling. This includes Sports, Entertainment, News, Streaming and Enterprise Products and Experiences.

Disney Entertainment & ESPN’s Product Design team is seeking a Lead Product Designer who will be an exceptional role model to our growing team. You'll guide and mentor a hardworking design team, focused on the evolution of our cross-platform design system used across ESPN sports apps, web properties, and emerging digital experiences. The right person for this role must have experience in developing comprehensive, intuitive, and future-forward UX mechanisms. They must also have a proven ability to inspire and mentor designers to push the boundaries, as well as keeping focus on optimizing design system elements for other designers and engineers to utilize.

In this role you will play a pivotal part in shaping the next generation of ESPN’s digital products and will shape the patterns that sports fans use across the entire ESPN digital ecosystem.

Responsibilities

Lead design systems efforts for the ESPN Core Design Systems team, supervising the work of at least 1-2 other designers

Partner with designers, engineers, and PMs across multiple teams to align on system usage, adoption, and evolution.

Design and maintain reusable components, patterns, and documentation in Figma (or similar tools), enabling efficient, cohesive product experiences.

Champion design system governance, establishing processes for contribution, feedback, and versioning.

Work with accessibility experts to ensure every component and pattern meets WCAG and inclusive design standards.

Act as a thought leader on design craft, systems thinking, and the unique demands of sports user experiences.

Mentor and guide designers on both system usage and contribution best practices.

Be the voice in the room that always puts the user first

Basic Qualifications

MUST be a sports enthusiast

Bachelor's degree required, MBA or technical degree preferred

Minimum 7 years in Product Design at a technology company

Minimum 1 year(s) of experience leading other designers either as a project lead or people manager

Passion for evolving the design practice; it’s people, processes and tools

Deep understanding of typography, motion, color theory, and interaction patterns in modern digital products.

Consulting skills to help stakeholders & partners uncover goals, constraints & dependencies; and then guide them to optimal solutions

Experience designing for native apps, web, and responsive platforms at scale.

A strong portfolio demonstrating both personal and team-based work

A deep arsenal of design tools (Figma, Sketch, InVision, Framer, Mural, Keynote)

Proficiency in user-centered design thinking methodologies

Outstanding visual design aesthetics combined usable experiences that address problems

Be able to communicate directly with Product Managers, Stakeholders, and Developers to translate their visions and constraints, into beautiful, functional products that will delight our users

Excellent prioritization and documentation skills

Preferred Qualific