Design Systems Engineer (6-Month Contract)
Viventium · United States
- Hybrid
- Contract
- $120,000 / year
- United States
Tailored resume — keyword-matched to this role.
Hiring manager — we find who's hiring.
Intro email — drafted to reach them directly.
Job highlights
- Fixes design system inconsistencies and accessibility issues.
- Audits codebase, extends Storybook, and documents components.
- Collaborates closely with engineering and design teams.
- Focuses on remediation and documentation, not greenfield development.
- Requires strong Angular, accessibility, and front-end skills.
About the role
About Viventium Software Inc.
Viventium Software Inc. is a SaaS-based human capital management solution that provides a remarkable user experience and award-winning software. Viventium provides flexible software and expert guidance so clients can be sure their payroll is done right. Viventium offers specialized solutions in the health services markets which include home care agencies and skilled nursing facilities. Viventium Software supports all fifty of the United States with payroll and HR solutions.
Relax - you’re with Viventium.
Position Purpose
Our designers can't reliably see what components already exist in our product. Our engineers reimplement the same primitives. Accessibility issues live undiscovered in shipped code. We're hiring someone to fix that.
This is a forensic and remediation role rather than a greenfield design system role. You'll read our existing codebase, evaluate and extend a partial Storybook setup, document what's there honestly, flag what's broken (especially accessibility), and produce the artifact our design team will use to rebuild the Figma library on top of code that's actually shipped. You'll work closely with two partners: the existing tech lead, who's already invested in this direction and will be your closest engineering collaborator, and the design team, who are both the primary consumer of your output and a daily partner in shaping it.
Key Objectives
- A working Storybook for the product's component library, hosted with Chromatic, with stories that cover the primitives (buttons, inputs, modals, navigation, data display patterns) at full variant, state, and accessibility coverage. This includes upgrading and reconfiguring the inherited Storybook setup to current standards.
- A component audit document — a structured catalog of what was found, including duplication clusters (which "buttons" are really the same component, which are meaningfully different), prop and API patterns across instances, and a severity-ranked list of accessibility findings.
- A consolidation proposal — a short memo recommending which components should become canonical, which should be deprecated, and what the design team should treat as the reference set when rebuilding the Figma library.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
- Component documentation in Storybook
- Codebase discovery and component auditing
- Accessibility audit and remediation guidance
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Strategic documentation and proposals
Minimum Qualifications
- Strong current Angular experience (Angular 16+, with standalone components, signals, and the modern control flow syntax), and deep familiarity with Storybook's Angular framework (Storybook 8+, CSF3) and Chromatic. You can talk fluently about the tradeoffs of different story-authoring patterns, controls, and test integrations within the Angular Storybook ecosystem.
- Substantive prior experience on a design system or internal platform/tooling team — you've contributed to or owned one, not just consumed one.
- Strong CSS and front-end fundamentals, with a real depth in accessibility (WCAG, ARIA patterns, focus management, screen reader behavior), theming, responsive design, typographic systems, and motion. A meaningful portion of this role is identifying and remediating accessibility failures, so it's not somewhere we can afford a soft spot.
- Taste and product sense in component API design. You can walk through a component you're proud of and explain the decisions behind its API — prop naming, variant structure, what you chose not to expose.
- Working comfort with AI-assisted engineering workflows (Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or similar). You treat AI as a power tool with known failure modes, not a magic wand — and you're clear-eyed that the tooling is meaningfully less mature for Angular than for React, so it'll help with the boilerplate work but won't accelerate this project as much as it might in a React codebase.
- Comfort reading unfamiliar codebases and reasoning about component semantics from code alone. The first few months of this work is archaeology — figuring out what exists and how it really behaves — and you need to be at home in that mode.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience working closely with a design team — pairing with designers, co-owning component decisions, translating design intent into component APIs.
- Experience with consolidation or migration work, taking a sprawling, inconsistent codebase and bringing it toward a canonical state. This is the hardest part of the job, and most greenfield design system experience doesn't prepare you for it.
- Experience inheriting and upgrading an existing Storybook setup — auditing configuration, modernizing addons, untangling story conventions that have drifted. This matches the day-one state of the role.
- Familiarity with headless or accessibility-primitive libraries in the Angular ecosystem (Angular CDK, Spartan/ng, ng-primitives, or wrapping web-component libraries like Shoelace), and an articulate view on when to wrap them versus build primitives from scratch.
- Open source contributions to design system or developer tooling projects, or experience writing public-facing component documentation that designers and PMs (not just engineers) actually use.
Key skills/competency
- Angular
- Design Systems
- Storybook
- Chromatic
- Accessibility (WCAG, ARIA)
- CSS
- Component API Design
- Codebase Auditing
- Front-end Development
- AI-assisted Engineering
Skills & topics
- Design Systems Engineer
- Angular
- Storybook
- Chromatic
- Accessibility
- WCAG
- ARIA
- CSS
- Front-end Development
- Component Audit
- API Design
- Viventium
How to get hired
- Tailor your resume: Highlight Angular 16+, Storybook 8+, Chromatic, and accessibility experience.
- Showcase design system work: Detail contributions to internal platforms or design systems.
- Emphasize remediation skills: Provide examples of auditing and fixing accessibility issues.
- Demonstrate collaboration: Mention experience working with design and engineering teams.
- Prepare for technical questions: Be ready to discuss component API design and code archaeology.
Technical preparation
Master Angular 16+ features.,Deep dive into Storybook Angular (CSF3).,Practice accessibility audits (WCAG, ARIA).,Study component API design principles.
Behavioral questions
Describe a complex codebase audit.,How do you collaborate with designers?,Explain your approach to accessibility remediation.,How do you handle inconsistent component libraries?
Frequently asked questions
- What is the primary focus of the Design Systems Engineer role at Viventium?
- The Design Systems Engineer role at Viventium is primarily a forensic and remediation position focused on auditing the existing codebase, extending a partial Storybook setup, documenting components, and identifying/fixing accessibility issues, rather than creating a new design system from scratch.
- What specific Angular version and Storybook experience is required for this Viventium role?
- Viventium requires strong current Angular experience (Angular 16+ with modern features) and deep familiarity with Storybook's Angular framework (Storybook 8+, CSF3) and Chromatic for this Design Systems Engineer position.
- How does Viventium approach accessibility in this Design Systems Engineer role?
- Accessibility is a critical component. The role involves a thorough accessibility audit, identifying and remediating failures based on WCAG, ARIA patterns, focus management, and screen reader behavior. A significant portion of the role is dedicated to this.
- What kind of collaboration can I expect as a Design Systems Engineer at Viventium?
- You will work closely with two key partners: the existing tech lead as your engineering collaborator, and the design team who are the primary consumers of your output and daily partners in shaping it. Cross-functional collaboration is essential.
- Is this a remote or on-site position at Viventium?
- The job description does not explicitly state the work arrangement. However, given the focus on codebase discovery and collaboration, it's likely to be either hybrid or remote, but confirmation would be needed.
- What is the expected duration of the Design Systems Engineer contract at Viventium?
- This is a 6-month contract position for a Design Systems Engineer at Viventium, offering a focused period to address specific design system and accessibility challenges.
- What does Viventium do?
- Viventium Software Inc. provides a SaaS-based human capital management solution, offering payroll and HR solutions with a focus on specialized markets like home care agencies and skilled nursing facilities across the United States.
- What are the key deliverables for the Design Systems Engineer at Viventium?
- Key deliverables include a functional Storybook with comprehensive component coverage, a component audit document detailing findings and accessibility issues, and a consolidation proposal for canonical components.