Staff Frontend Engineer - Design Systems

Copenhagen, Lisbon; London

We’re hiring a Staff Engineer to join the Design Systems team. This will help lead the engineering direction and execution of our design system across web and mobile.

What Design Systems does

• Own and evolve Telescope, Pleo’s design system (components, patterns, guidelines, and tooling).

• Enable product teams to ship faster with consistent UI, accessibility, and quality.

• Partner with Design and Engineering across the company to drive adoption and improve the contribution experience.

• Steward shared foundations (tokens, components, documentation, and best practices).

What you’ll be doing

As a Staff Engineer in Design Systems, you will be a force multiplier for product delivery and UI quality across Pleo

• Set technical direction for key parts of Telescope (architecture, component standards, release practices, and quality bars)

• Drive and evolve our contribution model and how teams interact with Design Systems

• Own and improve how requests flow into the team (triage, prioritisation, and expectations)

• Improve the developer and contributor experience through tooling and automation, including:

  • Design system visual testing and workflows

  • Supporting internal operational needs where relevant

  • Improving how we measure and communicate adoption and system health

  • Evolving our docs publishing workflow

• Lead rituals that keep the team effective and aligned

• Represent Design Systems in cross-team initiatives and align stakeholders across Design and Engineering

• Coach and mentor engineers, and help grow technical leadership in the frontend community

• Contribute hands-on in code. This role blends strategy and execution. You should expect to be coding a meaningful part of the time.

You’ll bring solid experience with

• Building and maintaining component libraries or platform-like products that serve multiple teams.

• TypeScript and modern frontend engineering (React experience is a plus).

• Designing maintainable systems with clear boundaries, versioning, and backwards compatibility.

• Testing practices and tooling (unit, integration, end-to-end) and a strong quality mindset.

• Accessibility and performance best practices for UI systems.

• Collaboration with designers and product engineers, and navigating tradeoffs across stakeholders.

Your colleagues would say you

• Lead by example and raise the bar with pragmatism and care.

• Communicate clearly, listen well, and bring people along in decisions.

• Enjoy breaking down complex problems, gathering input, and driving to a solution.

• Coach others and create space for people to grow.

• Prefer progress over perfection, while still caring deeply about quality.

Show me the benefits!

• Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending!)

• Lunch is on us for your work days - enjoy catered meals or receive a lunch allowance based on your local office

• Comprehensive private healthcare - depending on your location, coverage options include Vitality, Alan or Médis

• We offer 25 days of holiday + your public holidays

• For our Team, we offer both hybrid and fully remote working options

• We use MyndUp to give our employees access to free mental health and well-being support with great success so far

• Paid parental leave - we want to make sure that we're supportive of families and help you feel that you don't have to compromise your family due to work

About your application

• English first. Since it's our company language, please submit your application in English. You’ll be using it a lot if you join us.

• A fair look for everyone. Our talent team reads every single application to ensure the process is fair. To keep things running smoothly, we only accept applications through our system—our support team can’t pass on calls or emails.

• Diversity drives us. We can only reach our goals if our team reflects the world around us. That starts with you hitting apply, even if you don't tick every single box. We encourage people from all backgrounds and experiences to join us.

• Interview at your best. We want you to feel comfortable throughout the process. If you have any accessibility requirements or need a specific format, email [email protected]. We’ll design a process that works for you.

• Your data is safe. When you apply, we process your personal data as a data processor. For more information on how Pleo processes personal data, read our Privacy Policy here.

• Applying for multiple roles? Nothing is stopping you, and we assess every role independently. However, we do look for alignment, so make sure you can explain why your interest and experience are right for each specific role.

• Reapplying. If you’re applying for the same role again, please wait six months from your last decision before hitting submit.