Specialist, User Experience (Product Designer, Design Standards)

If you're passionate about helping a Fortune 100 company drive their strategy forward through innovative product development and advancing strategic partnerships to protect customers (and their pets), then Nationwide is the place for you! At Nationwide®, "on your side" goes beyond just words. Our customers are at the center of everything we do and we're looking for associates who are passionate about delivering extraordinary care.

Role Overview:

• Participate as an active member of an established team developing and maintaining a comprehensive enterprise design system to ensure consistency across all products.
• Collaborate with cross-functional LOB product designers and engineers to integrate the design system into various projects.
• Create, iterate, and refine design system components.
• Drive continuous improvement of the design system.
• Craft and communicate design vision and influence its rollout across multiple products.
• Collaborate with makers (designers and developers) to ensure tooling, communication, and engagement strategies are impactful.
• Share thought leadership with the team, company, and wider industry.

Key Responsibilities:

• Continuously improve and update the design system based on feedback and evolving needs.
• Help elevate design standards across the team by providing feedback and insights.
• Engage in all facets of design system work, from architecting components and patterns to writing guidelines and driving adoption.
• Systematically audit design system to identify inconsistencies and quality gaps.
• Create and document resources that help designers and engineers do their best work.
• Mentor and support other designers, helping them strengthen their craft.

Qualifications:

• Expertise in designing scalable, reusable components and patterns within a design system.
• Mastery of Figma, including component creation, prototyping, and design system organization.
• Understanding of how design systems operate within large, multi-product companies.
• Understanding of front-end development principles (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
• Strong knowledge of accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) and best practices for inclusive design.
• Experience designing for web and mobile frameworks, particularly Angular and/or Flutter.
• Outstanding communication and collaboration skills.
• Proficiency in creating and refining animations and micro-interactions for web interfaces.
• Familiarity with version control and handoff tools, such as GitHub.

• A knack for identifying and solving ambiguous problems.

Desired:

• Strong organizational skills.
• Strong visual design sensibilities.
• Experience working closely with engineers.
• Strategic thinking with tactical execution.
• Deep understanding of accessibility and inclusive design best practices.
• Experience with conventional design system tooling.

Bonus Points:

• Ability to write HTML, CSS, JS, or other coding languages.
• Exposure to advanced prototyping techniques and tooling.

Compensation Grade: F4

Due to the nature of this role, it will work in a hybrid capacity from the downtown Columbus offices.

Job Description Summary

Do you shine in at least one core user experience (UX) competency? We have a passion for creating exceptional experiences that have a real impact on people’s live and futures. If you understand the value UX provides in achieving strategic objectives and can articulate that value to cross-functional teams and business partners, we want to know more about you!

As a Specialist in the User Experience organization, in addition to expertise in one core strength (experience strategy, research, information architecture, interaction design, interface design, front-end development, content strategy or design operations), you’ll need to demonstrate a thorough grasp of a couple others. It'll be important to have an understanding of the design process and ability to work in the ambiguous discovery phase of identifying the right problem to tackle and the details of delivering desirable products. You’ll also have opportunities to work on project teams to distill complex problems into clear solutions that exemplify standard methodologies and encourage others. You will need to be adept at articulating and defending design decisions in a way that can be understood.