Design System Engineer (12-month FTC)

Job description

Why Technology at loveholidays? At loveholidays - we trailblaze together. We’re on a mission to open the world to everyone, giving our customers’ unlimited choice, unmatched ease and unmissable value for their next getaway. Our team is the driving force behind our role as our customers’ personal holiday expert - the smart way to get away. Technology at loveholidays underpins our vision to become the global leader in packaged holidays. We drive cutting-edge innovation and technical excellence to futureproof the business. Our systems process trillions of daily holiday offers, we deploy over a thousand times a month, serving thousands of requests per second. This is where you can accelerate your growth by solving complex challenges and broadening your skillset. Join us to create impact for our future in an exciting new chapter, owning your success and contributing to shared goals. We actively talk about technology https://tech.loveholidays.com/ and adhere to our key technology principles https://tech.loveholidays.com/the-5-principles-that-helped-scale-loveholidays-7ea0b0fd3df9 that have guided us this far. We are growing and have ambitious plans to expand across Europe, employing the best minds and technology to let us do this. About the team: Our product teams work across the customer journey to unlock opportunities that enable commercial growth and build value for our customers. In order to maximise the impact of these teams we need to further invest in our design system to enhance its potential as a critical platform for growth. We are evolving our ways of working and investing heavily in AI. This makes it a critical period for our design system to mature into the intelligence layer we need it to be to drive quality output and outcomes, helping us realise our ambition of becoming the global leader in packaged holidays. The impact you’ll have: As Design System Engineer, you’ll play a pivotal role in elevating product quality and consistency across loveholidays’ customer-facing experience. Working with design and tech leaders you'll own the evolution of our design system – bridging design intent and frontend implementation – while helping our teams move faster and ship more consistently, especially as AI-assisted development becomes central to how we build. This is a rare opportunity to shape the visual and interactive foundation of a product used by millions of travellers, working at the intersection of design craft, frontend engineering, and developer experience. Additional Info: This role is a 12-month FTC contract Your day-to-day: - Operationalise the design system. Co-lead its evolution and governance, build and maintain a robust component library in React/TypeScript, and establish clear adoption standards across product teams – enabling the operational loop between Figma, code, and multi-brand delivery - Help define how our design system supports AI-generated frontend code (Claude Code, Cursor and similar tooling), reducing rework and improving consistency of AI output, whilst enabling innovation and experimentation at scale - Bridge design and engineering, working closely with product designers and engineers to translate design decisions into reusable, production-ready components - Review design system features before release to ensure they meet high UX and consistency standards; make targeted visual and interaction refinements aligned with design system guidelines - Improve developer experience by partnering with engineers to make the system intuitive to use, well-documented, and a genuine accelerant - Collaborate with design leadership, product managers, and engineering to ensure the system reflects evolving product priorities Your skillset: - Proven experience building and evolving multi-platform design systems (Web, iOS, Android). You are an expert in React, TypeScript, and modern CSS, with a focus on token architecture and scalable component libraries - You are a true systems thinker who understands versioning, governance, and adoption strategies. You can anticipate the downstream impact of architectural choices and drive cross-team consistency without relying on mandates - A collaborative communicator with strong design sensibility. You don’t just translate specs; you contribute to visual and interaction decisions and are equally comfortable pairing with a designer on a spec as you are reviewing an engineer's PR - You use usage analytics, adoption metrics, and research to guide decisions. You take pride in writing migration guides and documentation that are easy to consume, ensuring the system remains high-quality and "AI-ready" for coding assistants - A deep commitment to web performance. You understand how design system choices impact Core Web Vitals at scale and are driven to ensure loveholidays remains the fastest travel platform in the industry - You treat accessibility as a core requirement, not a "nice-to-have." You ensure that our component guardrails make it easy for every engineer to build inclusive experiences that open up travel to everyone Desirable: - Knowledge and understanding of the travel sector or other D2C e-commerce environments - Experience building design system foundations that supports multi-brand/white-label architecture and internationalisation at scale The interview journey: 1. TA screening - 30 mins 2. 1st stage interview with the Hiring Manager - 45 mins 3. Tech challenge - you can choose between a live and take home option 4. Final stage - consisting of discussions around three key areas Perks of joining us: - Company pension contributions at 5%. - Individualised training budget for you to learn on the job and level yourself up. - Discounted holidays for you, your family and friends. - 25 days of holidays per annum (plus 8 public holidays) increases by 1 day for every second year of service, up to a maximum 30 days per annum. - Ability to buy and sell annual leave. - Cycle to work scheme, season ticket loan and eye care vouchers. At loveholidays, we focus on developing an inclusive culture and environment that encourages personal growth and collective success. Each individual offers unique perspectives and ideas that increase the diversity and effectiveness of our teams. And we value the insight and potential you could bring on our continued journey.