Stefan Poulos
Design Systems Leader — Staff / Principal IC or Senior Director
SUMMARY
Staff-level product designer and design-systems leader who covers three roles most teams hire separately: design systems architecture with real technical depth, hands-on product design, and big-picture UX vision with creative craft. 25+ years spanning enterprise product design, brand strategy, and creative direction. Most recently led design systems strategy at Marriott International, architecting the Figma-to-code pipeline and component library ecosystem behind a 9,000+ property, 40+ brand digital portfolio, while holding every component and token to a high bar for craft and accessibility (WCAG AAA). Founder of Poulos Collective, an independent consultancy delivering design systems, UX strategy, and creative direction for global brands including Marriott, Ellucian, Pandora, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Under Armour. Seeking a staff, principal, or fellow-level design IC role that draws on both design-systems depth and product design craft.
“He’s the equivalent of having three designers on the team.”
EXPERTISE
- Design Systems
- Atomic design architecture, design tokens, component documentation & governance, accessibility (WCAG AAA), cross-platform alignment (web, iOS, Android)
- Figma
- Variables, component properties, library management, custom plugin development, Figma-to-code automation
- UX & Product
- E-commerce (PDP, cart, checkout, account), enterprise software, information architecture
- Strategy & Direction
- Brand and design-language strategy, executive stakeholder alignment, creative direction at scale, cross-functional influence
- AI & Automation
- Claude and Claude Code for agentic workflows, Cursor, design-to-code pipelines, agent-ready system design
- Motion & Interaction
- Motion design and animation direction as Creative Director at Discovery Communications; ongoing creative collaboration with animators, illustrators, and photographers across a 25+ year career
- Consumer & Commerce at Scale
- Search, account, checkout, and personalized shopping experiences across Marriott's 9,000+ properties and Pandora's global e-commerce platform
- Mentorship & Training
- Mentored and upskilled design teams through hundreds of Figma, systems, and AI-workflow sessions across two org-wide tool migrations
- Writing & Perspective
- Public writing on design systems, AI, and craft at stefanpoulos.substack.com
EXPERIENCE
Poulos Collective
Founder, UX/UI Product Design Consultant. Independent UX and design systems consultancy delivering visual design, UX strategy, and creative direction across industries. Featured engagements below.
Marriott International — Senior UX Design Systems Consultant
- Owned the end-to-end modernization of Marriott's global navigation (Q4 2023): full state matrix across authentication, page context, and breakpoint, componentized and aligned to the ARIES/PHOENIX engineering programs for build-ready handoff.
- Architected an end-to-end Figma-to-code pipeline connecting design tokens directly to production code, consolidating 35+ fragmented brand libraries into one token architecture spanning 40+ brands, cutting brand CSS generation from months to days, and holding every token and component to Marriott's required WCAG AAA accessibility standard.
- Built and scaled Marriott's Omni design system to 100+ components (65+ in the original Web UI Kit, mapped to a 331-file React package), with a Figma library ecosystem spanning Foundation, Platform, Product, and Annotation kits.
- Built and shipped 10 productized Claude-based AI skills across the design team, reframed to leadership as team-wide standards for working with AI; cut Confluence dev-guide production from multi-day manual effort to hours and legacy-to-Omni component conversion from hours of expert work to minutes.
- Regularly present design and brand strategy to VP-level leadership; most recently reframed the luxury portfolio's token-based design-language approach and clarified the boundary between aesthetic distinction (design system) and journey distinction (cross-functional).
- Led the org-wide migration from Sketch to Figma, the second of two such migrations, training teams through hundreds of workshops and sessions.
Marriott International — UX Design Consultant
- Led UX vision and strategy for Marriott Digital's multi-year product roadmap, partnering with agency Work&Co and cross-functional leadership on a revenue-focused digital strategy across the guest journey.
- Designed the account merge experience for the 2018 Marriott Rewards/Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty program integration, one of the largest loyalty program mergers in hospitality.
- Redesigned Marriott's room-and-rate search and sort experience, backed by quantitative and qualitative research, resolving a rate-complexity problem spanning thousands of properties.
Pandora A/S — Design Lead & Design System Architect
- Led the full site redesign for Pandora's transition to the SFRA backend, optimizing mobile-first design across navigation, PLP, PDP, cart, checkout, and account.
- Redesigned and fine-tuned the cart and checkout flow to increase add-to-bag conversion, using funnel analysis to target the highest-friction steps (shipping and payment) and resolve the tension between guest-checkout preference and the loyalty program's sign-up requirement; rolled out phased fixes across US, FR/ES, and UK markets.
- Built a comprehensive digital style guide and Figma design system in partnership with engineering, defining grid, typography, color, and spacing standards, leading the org's migration from Sketch to Figma along the way, the first of two such migrations.
- Designed shopping features including a virtual try-on experience, interactive gift finder, and custom bracelet builder.
Additional engagements: Ellucian (design system operationalization for education software), Cvent (global design system redesign), Under Armour (mobile e-commerce and connected fitness concepts), Macy's/Bloomingdale's (luxury e-commerce and next-gen shopping features), GetWellNetwork (healthcare platform brand direction), Total Wine (loyalty account experience redesign), and Compass (early-stage real estate platform UX).
Pappas Group
Executive Creative Director
- Transformed Pappas into a strategic full-service agency, establishing new roles and creative/production workflows; led new-business pitches securing Virgin America, Syfy, Geico, and African Wildlife Foundation.
- Led UX for Virgin America's in-flight seatback entertainment system.
Discovery Communications
Creative Director
- In-house Creative Director directing motion design, animation, and broadcast campaigns for Discovery Channel and Science Channel's most recognizable programs, including Deadliest Catch, Dirty Jobs, MythBusters, Planet Earth, and Shark Week, reaching audiences in 170 countries.
- Directed the award-winning Future Weapons campaign, driving 5M+ visitors to the program's website within 30 days.
EDUCATION
Ringling College of Art & Design
BFA, Design Communication · 1993 – 1997