Senior Designer - Thales Design System

About Thales

Thales is a global leader in high technologies specializing in three sectors: Defense & Security, Aerospace & Space, and Cyber & Digital. The company develops products and solutions that contribute to a safer, more environmentally friendly, and more inclusive world. Thales invests nearly 4 billion euros annually in Research & Development, particularly in key innovation areas such as AI, cybersecurity, quantum, cloud technologies, and 6G. Thales employs nearly 81,000 people in 68 countries.

Thales Digital Factory is part of Thales's transformation program, with the ambition to become a key and exemplary digital player across all its markets. Our mission is to accelerate the digital transition of the Thales Group by venturing into new ways of working and decision-making.

Our Commitments, Your Benefits

• Success driven by technological excellence, your experience, and shared ambition
• An attractive compensation package
• Continuous skill development: training courses, internal academies, and communities
• An inclusive, benevolent environment that respects employee work-life balance
• Recognized societal and environmental commitment

Your Day-to-Day

As a Senior Designer - Thales Design System, you will join the UX-UI Design discipline and the Quantum Design System project team at Thales Digital Factory. Your role is pivotal in advancing Quantum, Thales's Design System, to a new level of maturity. This involves strategic evolution, implementing an advanced Design Token system, developing a new visual language, and consolidating development libraries. You will be at the heart of strategic developments, participate in scaling the next version, and support the smooth adoption of these innovations across the organization.

To ensure your application is considered, please submit a portfolio illustrating your approach to working and thinking for digital product design (UI Design and design system).

About the Quantum Design System Team

Quantum, the Thales Design System for digital, is a strategic pillar adopted by over 300 designers and 2,000 developers across the Group. It enhances our brand image and enables the creation of premium user experiences while supporting the company's overall performance.

Joining the product team responsible for Quantum, you will participate in the conception, evolution, and maintenance of the Design System. As a true common foundation for all our digital products, our Design System ensures brand and design consistency and operational efficiency of Thales interfaces at scale.

Quantum Design System Overview

• Design: Design libraries (on Figma and other design tools), encompassing color palettes, typographies, layout structures, elevation levels, icon systems, components, patterns, templates, and guidelines. Each component is meticulously designed in various states, resulting in hundreds of variants.
• Development: The system includes comprehensive implementation packages and documentation, based on a single source of design truth via tokens. It supports all major web technologies, as well as extensions for desktop clients.

Quantum operates on a hybrid contribution model: a central team (3 designers, 3 front-end developers) working in Agile-Kanban, collaborating with a Guild of 30 contributors across Thales entities.

Our Target Candidate

We are seeking an experienced Designer, passionate about code, capable of bridging design and development, and contributing to a robust, scalable, and inspiring system for the teams.

About the UX-UI Design Discipline

The UX-UI Design discipline brings together passionate designers with varied backgrounds (product, service, research, visual, design ops...). We work at the heart of delivery teams to design consistent, accessible, and useful experiences that create value for both users and clients.

Our mission is to build quality experiences, foster sharing and continuous improvement, and nurture a culture of collaboration, learning, and collective progression. We cultivate a spirit of openness, curiosity, and mutual support through dedicated times for exchange, inspiration, and skill development.

Who Are You?

• A senior designer with at least 8 years of experience, including 2-3 years in a Design System team.
• You have a strong UI culture and attention to detail that ensures consistency and visual quality.
• You know how to collaborate with developers thanks to your understanding of technical logic.
• You enjoy structuring, rationalizing, and documenting to make design reusable and scalable.
• You inspire confidence and leadership, and know how to engage others in a collective approach.

Your Mindset

• Curious and proactive: You love to explore, propose, and go beyond the obvious.
• Rigorous and passionate: With a systemic approach.
• Autonomous and humble: You know how to train yourself and recognize that nuance is a strength.
• Impact and learning-oriented: You are here to build as much as to learn, in an evolving environment.
• Inspiring and collaborative: You share your energy and best practices to grow the team and community.
• Comfortable with uncertainty: You know how to navigate fluid contexts and provide thoughtful solutions.

Your Skills and Experience

• Solid expertise and strong UI culture: typography, micro-interactions, gestures, attention to detail, rigor.
• Good understanding and mastery of web development fundamentals (HTML/CSS, JS, components, IDE environment).
• Very good mastery of Figma (Penpot is a plus).
• Experience in accessibility (at least one experience integrating interface or components with an AA accessibility level).
• Experience in implementing design tokens with theming and increased curiosity to push the subject further.
• Ability to prototype in code (without aiming for production code).
• Experience in branding is a plus.
• Solid practice of UX design methods (research, tests...) and ease in facilitating workshops.
• Ability to evolve in a hybrid and agile framework, prioritizing collaboration and contribution.
• Ease in communication and collaboration with multidisciplinary teams.
• Assertive, stimulating, and flexible leadership.
• Very good command of English (minimum C1 level).

Your Missions

• Design and prototype our design system components following a code-first design philosophy and method.
• Work hand-in-hand with the Design Lead and Tech Lead on large-scale topics.
• Gather and understand user needs and uses by applying appropriate UX methods (interviews, workshops, user tests, ...).
• Actively participate in the complete stylistic revision of the design system to evolve the brand towards a more premium universe.
• Structure and maintain our design tokens: modeling, management, automation.
• Translate ideas and prototypes into concrete artifacts in our design tools (Figma, Penpot, ...).
• Document, formalize, explain, and support the multi-business user community of the design system.
• Be an UI reference within the team and for the community: design review and sharing of best practices.
• Regularly monitor key and satellite topics of a Design System.

Thales, a disability-inclusive company, recognizes all talents. Diversity is our best asset. Apply and join us!

Key skills/competency

• UI/UX Design
• Design System Development
• Figma & Penpot
• HTML/CSS/JavaScript
• Design Tokens Implementation
• Web Accessibility (WCAG AA)
• Code-First Prototyping
• Agile & Hybrid Methodologies
• Cross-functional Collaboration
• Leadership & Mentoring