Sr. System Designer II

We are hiring a Sr. System Designer II to help evolve the Helium Design System, powering Yum!’s global Digital Ordering ecosystem across web, mobile, kiosk, and loyalty experiences.
This role focuses on scaling and maturing design system foundations for commerce, enabling consistent, high-quality customer experiences across the KFC brand. 
As a senior individual contributor, you will drive component strategy, interaction patterns, and token implementation within Helium—partnering closely with Design, Product, and Engineering to ensure the system supports real-world transactional complexity at scale.
Unlike traditional product design roles, this position is centered on building shared design infrastructure that accelerates product teams and ensures consistency across millions of customer interactions globally.
 

What You’ll Do

Design System Execution & Evolution (Commerce Focus)

• Drive the design and refinement of Helium components supporting core commerce flows (browse, customize, cart, checkout, loyalty) 
• Support brands as they onboard to the Helium Design System (adapt/adopt model) 
• Translate product and business needs into scalable, reusable system components and patterns 
• Contribute to the evolution of design tokens (color, typography, spacing, states) ensuring consistency across platforms 
• Apply and extend existing system architecture and patterns, identifying opportunities for improvement 

Component & Interaction Design

• Design components that support complex transactional behaviors, including:  
  • Pricing and promotions 
  • Modifiers and customization 
  • Availability and edge cases 
  • Error and state handling 
• Ensure components are modular, composable, and adaptable across web, mobile, and kiosk environments 
• Partner with Engineering to ensure production-ready, implementation-aligned designs

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, and Research to align system solutions with roadmap priorities 
• Partner closely with Staff Systems Designer to support Helium, evolve the platform and onboard new brands 
• Collaborate with Design Systems team: Sr. Manager, Sr. Systems Designer and Director, Digital & Design Systems 
• Participate in and help facilitate design critiques, working sessions, and planning
• Support product teams in adopting and applying Helium effectively 

System Consistency & Quality

• Identify and help reduce pattern fragmentation and redundancy across commerce experiences 
• Contribute to documentation, usage guidelines, and system standards 
• Ensure designs meet accessibility and usability standards across platforms 

Multi-Brand Enablement

• Support multiple brands in applying the system through tokens, theming, and component variants 
• Support multiple brands in onboarding and setup of the ‘brand expression layer’ 
• Balance consistency with brand expression within defined system frameworks 
• Partner with teams to ensure alignment with Helium DS

AI-Enabled Design Acceleration

• Leverage AI tools (e.g., Figma MCP, Claude, etc.) to improve design efficiency, iteration speed, and documentation 
• Contribute to emerging practices for AI-assisted system workflows 

How You’ll Work

Design Vision & Strategy

• Contributes to experience strategy for commerce-focused system areas 
• Aligns component and interaction decisions with customer needs and business goals 
• Helps evolve system direction through hands-on design and informed recommendations

Design Creation

• Owns and delivers high-quality system components and patterns across multiple workstreams 
• Applies and extends existing frameworks, occasionally introducing new patterns where needed 
• Ensures solutions are scalable, reusable, and production-ready 

Design Collaboration

• Partners deeply with PM, Engineering, and Research 
• Actively participates in critiques, workshops, and cross-team alignment 
• Works within a shared system model, contributing to collective outcomes 

Complexity & Problem Solving

• Independently solves complex design challenges within commerce workflows 
• Uses judgment to identify gaps and propose practical, scalable solutions 
• Balances system integrity with product needs and delivery timelines 

• 9+ years of experience in system design, product design, UX architecture, or related fields.
• Demonstrated expertise building or evolving enterprise-scale design systems.
• Deep knowledge of component archi