Sr. Product Manager, Design Systems

Job Description:

Rakuten International oversees 7 businesses with over 4,000 employees globally. The brand is recognized for its leadership and innovation in e-commerce, digital content, advertising, entertainment and communications, bringing the joy of discovery and access to more than 1 billion members across the world. Our teams deliver on the company’s mission to delight merchants and customers through innovation, optimism, and teamwork.

Rakuten Rewards is a leading e-commerce company that enhances the way people shop by offering Cash Back, deals and rewards from more than 3,500 merchants. Founded in 1999, Rakuten has grown to become the go-to shopping destination for consumers, having paid out nearly $2 billion in Cash Back to its 15 million members. The company also operates ShopStyle, a leading fashion discovery destination, and Cartera Commerce, a top rewards platform for airlines and banks. For more information, visit www.rakuten.com.
 

Job Summary:

We’re looking for a Sr. Product Manager to own the roadmap for our UI kits and services that implement our Design System and drive the delivery of consistent user experiences across all platforms.

As the product manager, you’ll collaborate closely with designers, other product managers, and engineers to deliver the foundational capability that powers our internal Experience Platform.

In this role, you will develop, execute, and manage product strategies and roadmaps, ensuring alignment with business objectives and customer needs. You will bridge technical expertise with market insights to guide product development, enhancements, and lifecycle management. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including engineering, marketing, and sales, to define product requirements, prioritize features, and oversee execution. By analyzing data and industry trends, you will make informed decisions that drive innovation and value. Your role will include creating product documentation, conducting competitive analyses, and ensuring a seamless product delivery process to achieve organizational goals.

Key Responsibilities:

• Gather the requirements from the stakeholders including designers and product managers to define and prioritize the Design System features based on user needs and business goals.

• Translate the design requirements into technical specifications needed to implement on the web and mobile platforms.

• Establish and refine intake workflows for feature requests, bug reports, and improvements to the Design Systems, balancing the priorities between platform enhancements with stakeholder needs.

• Define the governance model for design system enhancements, delivery, and deployment.

• Actively solicit feedback from and advocate for the needs of designers and product managers to continuously improve the experience across all platforms.

• Own the communication of releases, updates, and their impact on the applications to relevant stakeholders on appropriate channels.

Qualifications:

• Strong experience contributing to design systems, UI frameworks, and component libraries.

• Strong technical fluency to collaborate closely with engineering teams.

• Proven experience setting roadmaps, managing feature and enhancement intake workflows, and prioritizing across multiple stakeholders.

• Strong communication skills to present technical capabilities to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Familiarity with one or more front-end UI frameworks or toolkits such as React, SwiftUI, and Jetpack Compose.

• Understanding of design tokens, accessibility standards, and the relationship between design and application code on one or more platforms.

• Experience developing with HTML/CSS will be huge plus.

• Familiarity or development experience with Web frameworks such as React, or app development on iOS or Android, will be a plus.

Minimum Requirements:

• 5+ years of product management experience preferably owning the design systems definition and drove its implementation.

• A bachelor’s degree in Product Design, Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field is required

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Five Principles for Success
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success -