Senior Architect, Design System and User Experience

Senior Architect, Design System And User Experience

• Pay Rate: $98.63/hour, depending on experience
• Contract Length: 2 Months, Possible Extension
• Location: Calgary, Alberta
  
  

Raise is currently hiring a Senior Architect, Design System and User Experience on behalf of our client. They’re expanding their team to meet growing needs, making this a unique opportunity to work with an industry leader. Our Client, is an essential player in Alberta's Energy Industry, that prioritizes safeguarding public safety and environmental integrity while fostering responsible, efficient, and secure energy development

Note: The primary pay rate is based on the rate for an incorporated contractor who owns their own business. However, we will also consider applications from candidates interested in a T4 arrangement, where applicable.

Description

The Senior Architect, Design System and User Experience in this role will lead the creation and implementation of the design system for our Regulatory Platform Modernization (RPM) program. This role is focused on architecting a comprehensive, production-grade design system for complex transactional web applications. A core requirement for this engagement is structuring the design system so that it is fully consumable by modern AI tooling, ensuring that AI-generated mockups and code are compliant on the first pass.

Key Deliverables

• Token Architecture & Set: Published token set derived from the design guide, serving as a unified source for both design and code.
• Core Component Set: Essential primitives required for initial regulatory pages implemented in Angular Material, complete with written accessibility specifications.
• Layout & Template Standards: Page template standards tailored for the initial RPM page archetypes.
• AI-Assisted Workflow Standard: Established instruction/context files, guardrails, and review gates proven by generating a compliant page through the workflow.
• Reference Implementation & Handover: Reference implementation of 1–2 representative pages, accompanied by a handover note identifying the named owner of record and a prioritized backlog for the remainder of the system.
  
  

Responsibilities

• Author the organizations design system for the regulatory web application, covering design tokens, primitive elements, composite components, layout and page templates, interaction patterns, form and validation behaviour, empty and error states, and content and microcopy standards
• Translate the existing design guide into an implementable token architecture with semantic layering (primitive, semantic, and component level tokens), theming, and density variants, so brand compliance is enforced by the tokens rather than by review
• Define layout standards for the page archetypes the regulatory application actually needs, including search and result lists, record detail, multi step submission forms, review and decision queues, dashboards, document viewers, and map and geospatial views
• Define the component inventory and the composition rules, including when to consume a Material component as delivered, when to extend it, when to build custom, and what must never be forked
• Make the design system consumable by AI tooling. Publish machine readable tokens, component APIs, usage rules, worked examples, and pattern descriptions structured so that AI generated mockups and code are compliant on the first pass rather than corrected afterward
• Establish the AI assisted design to code workflow end to end, from prompt or wireframe through to a compliant Angular Material page, including instruction files, guardrails, review gates, and the definition of done that developers and designers work to
• Design the patterns for AI features inside the product experience, including conversational assistance, in context guidance, and generative or predictive help, with explicit treatment of provenance, citation, confidence, correction, human escalation, and failure states
• Define digital adoption patterns: onboarding, progressive disclosure, in product guidance, help content placement, and the instrumentation needed to measure task success, time on task, error rate, and abandonment
• Define the design system governance model: contribution process, versioning and deprecation policy, breaking change handling, and the conformance checks that run in CI
• Build capability through coaching, pattern walkthroughs, and developer facing documentation, and transfer each published standard to a named owner of record
  
  

Qualifications

• Production Design System Experience: Demonstrated authorship of a production design system that development teams built from. (Experience limited to screen design, style guides, or Figma libraries without implemented component libraries will not qualify).
• Design Token Architecture: Expertise in semantic token layering, theming, and publishing tokens to code as a shared source of truth.
• WCAG 2.2 AA Conformance: Hands-on experience designing, auditing, remediating, and testing with assistive technology. (Theoretical awareness is insufficient).
• AI Tooling Integration: Demonstrated use of AI tooling in shipped design/build workflows, with the ability to explain how systems and instructions were structured to ensure first-pass compliance.
• Complex Application Design: Background in designing complex transactional or regulatory applications featuring multi-step forms, long-lived cases, high data density, and role-based views.
• Technical Writing: Exceptional technical writing skills ensuring standards are immediately usable by developers and AI coding tools without the author present.
• Shared Governance: Experience governing shared component libraries across multiple delivery teams, handling versioning, deprecation, and contributions.
• Recommended Skills & Experience
• Angular Ecosystem: Hands-on experience with Angular (17+) and Angular Material, including theming APIs, CDK, and packaging/publishing shared component libraries.
• AI Interface Design: Experience designing AI features like chat assistants, retrieval-grounded answers with citations, streaming responses, and hallucination handling.
• Digital Adoption Platforms: Familiarity with tools such as WalkMe, Pendo, or Userlane for walkthrough design and telemetry.
• Public Sector Experience: Familiarity with public sector/government design systems (e.g., GC Design System, GOV.UK, Alberta.ca, USWDS) and public service obligations.
• Design Ops Tooling: Storybook, visual regression testing, and automated accessibility testing integrated into CI pipelines.
• Geospatial Interfaces: Map interface patterns including layer control, feature selection, and attribute display.
• Education & Certifications
• University degree in Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Design, Computer Science, or a related discipline (or equivalent demonstrated experience).
• Portfolio: A robust portfolio showcasing design system architecture and shipped complex applications is required.
• Certifications (Preferred): IAAP CPACC, WAS, or Nielsen Norman Group UX certification (implementation experience weighted above certification).
  
  

Looking for meaningful work? We can help!

Raise is an established hiring firm with over 65 years of experience. We believe strongly in making the world a better place through work, which is why we’re a certified B Corporation and donate 10% of our profits to charity.

We strive to build teams that reflect the diversity of the communities we work in. We encourage all qualified applicants to apply, including people from traditionally underrepresented groups such as women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, people identifying as LGBTQ2SI, veterans, and people with visible/nonvisible disabilities.

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