Design Engineer jobs in United Kingdom

Want to do work that really matters?
At Checkatrade, we’re building the UK’s go‑to home improvement marketplace. Every day, we help millions of homeowners find the right tradesperson for the job, fast, fair, and without the faff.

As our next Lead Design Systems Product Designer, you will architect and evolve the shared foundation our designers and engineers rely on every day. You will set direction, define principles, build components, and shape the tokens, motion and spacing that hold the system together. This is a hands on leader role at the intersection of design, engineering and brand, where you guide standards, mentor others, and still get into the craft to make sure the system is clear, scalable and consistently used across all surfaces.

• Designing and evolving our multi-platform design system across web, iOS and Android.

• Owning the end-to-end architecture in Figma - components, patterns, tokens, motion, spacing, accessibility and documentation.

• Building and maintaining high-quality libraries that designers love and engineers trust.

• Partnering closely with engineering to ensure accurate, performant implementation across platforms.

• Creating structure where none exists: contribution models, governance, versioning, release cycles and QA.

• Running audits to spot gaps, remove friction, and evolve the system as our products scale.

• Shaping how system-level thinking is applied in real product teams across trade and consumer.

• Mentoring designers on how to design within, contribute to, and get the most from a complex system.

• Championing adoption across teams - showing how the system speeds delivery and elevates quality.

• Rolling up your sleeves and getting hands‑on ~70% of the time, with leadership and enablement making up the rest.

• A track record of building or evolving robust, multi-platform design systems - ideally in a mature product environment, not a first‑version start‑up environment.

• Systems thinking: the ability to connect tokens → components → patterns → brand → engineering in a cohesive, scalable way.

• Mastery of Figma, with experience architecting libraries, not just consuming them.

• Familiarity with engineering workflows (React, Storybook, token pipelines) and the ability to collaborate deeply with engineers.

• Strong communication - the kind that brings clarity, structure, and calm to ambiguity.

• Curiosity, craft pride, and a roll‑your‑sleeves‑up attitude.

• Competitive salary + annual bonus or commission (role dependent)

• Health, well‑being and learning support

• Gym membership, Smart Tech Scheme and Cycle Scheme

• Birthday/Special day leave

• Buy & sell holiday scheme

• 1 week’s paid charity leave and much more!

If you require any reasonable adjustments during our interview process, please discuss them with your Talent Acquisition Partner.

If this sounds like the place where you can do your best work, we’d love to hear from you, even if you don’t tick every box

We’re Checkatrade – the UK’s leading platform for finding a tradesperson. With more than 50,000 trades listed and over 6 million reviews, we help homeowners get jobs done right and help tradespeople grow their business.

We’re growing fast, with big plans to become the go‑to brand for home improvements. If you care about great work, take pride in the details, and want to make an impact, you’ll fit right in.