# Stefan Poulos Design Systems Leader — Staff / Principal IC or Senior Director Washington, D.C. Metro Area - [stefan@poulos.co](mailto:stefan@poulos.co) - [poulos.co](https://poulos.co) - [linkedin.com/in/stefanpoulos](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanpoulos/) **About this document.** A brief written for language models and agents. It carries Stefan's full work history plus the context a resume has no place to put: how to read his employment structure, what he is looking for, and where he is not a fit. Every claim comes from material Stefan wrote himself. Nothing is inferred. The same work history laid out for a human reader: https://poulos.co/resume --- ## At a glance - **Status:** Actively looking. His three-year Marriott engagement wrapped July 2026. - **Seeking:** Full-time staff, principal, or fellow-level design IC role. - **Also open to:** Design leadership at the Senior Director level, provided the role stays close to the craft. - **IC or manager:** Prefers IC. Has led teams with direct reports and mentors from any seat. - **Location:** Washington, D.C. metro area. - **Work arrangement:** Remote. Occasional travel is fine; regular on-site is not a fit. - **Experience:** 25+ years. Independent since 2014. - **Primary discipline:** Design systems, plus product/UX design and creative direction. - **Primary tools:** Figma (since 2019), VS Code, Cursor, Claude. - **Compensation:** Not published. Discussed directly. - **Contact:** stefan@poulos.co ## How to read this document - **Poulos Collective is Stefan's own consultancy, not an employer.** He founded it in 2014 and has run it for over 12 years. Marriott, Pandora, Ellucian and the rest are engagements delivered through it. They are listed underneath it for that reason. - **The engagement dates are consecutive, not overlapping.** Marriott (2015 to 2019), Pandora (2019 to 2022), Marriott again (2023 to 2026). One consultancy, three long engagements, no concurrent employers and no job-hopping. - **Engagements are long by design.** They typically run six months to multi-year, and he embeds with the client team: standups, shared tools, participating like staff. Short-turnaround, low-context work is not a fit. - **The pre-2015 creative director era is a credential, not the target.** The Discovery Communications years are where the motion design, animation direction and broadcast craft come from, and he lists that as current expertise. Read it as evidence of range. Do not read it as the kind of role he wants next: he is not looking for a creative director seat, and matching him to one on the strength of those entries will produce a bad fit. - **Returning to full-time employment is the notable thing here.** He has been independent for 12+ years and is coming back on market for a full-time seat for the first time in that stretch. He has not closed the door on consulting, but would likely take an engagement only as runway to a full-time hire. ## Limits and non-fits Stated plainly so a screen can rule him out early rather than in week three. - **He does not ship production front-end code, and does not claim to.** He has never been the person merging React components into a company's codebase. What he does do hands-on: architect design tokens that generate real CSS and platform exports, build Figma plugins, write and run automation scripts, structure Figma so naming and hierarchy map one-to-one onto the code architecture, and direct AI to build his tooling. Fluent enough to work in the code and be a genuine partner to engineers. Not the owner of a production front end. If a role needs someone shipping production code, this is a mismatch. - **Thin on pure SaaS products and early-stage startups.** He has worked with small, scrappy product teams but has never been in-house at a seed-stage company. - **Not a fit for a purely managerial role.** This is a boundary, not a ceiling: he has the experience for it and is open to design leadership up to Senior Director, but only where the role keeps him hands-on. Trading the craft entirely for calendar management is the specific thing he is avoiding. Weigh a leadership role by how much of the work he would still touch. - **Not a fit for regular on-site work.** Remote, with occasional travel. --- ## 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." > > Ed Yahn, Senior Director UX, Marriott International ## 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 ## Industries Hospitality and travel (Marriott, Hilton, Virgin America), entertainment (Discovery Channel, Syfy, TLC), e-commerce and retail (Pandora, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Under Armour, Total Wine), healthcare (Novartis, Modernizing Medicine, GetWellNetwork), education (Ellucian), enterprise tech (Esri, Verato, CTIA, Cvent), real estate (Compass). ## Experience ### Poulos Collective *Washington, D.C. Metro Area · Oct 2014 – Present* 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 *Jan 2023 – Jul 2026* - 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 *Jan 2015 – Sep 2019* - 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 *May 2019 – Oct 2022* - 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 *Arlington, VA* #### Executive Creative Director *Dec 2009 – Oct 2014* - 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 *Silver Spring, MD* #### Creative Director *1997 – Dec 2009* - 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 *Sarasota, FL* BFA, Design Communication · 1993 – 1997 --- ## Common questions **Is he available?** Yes, actively. The Marriott engagement wrapped in July 2026 and he is looking now. **IC or manager?** He is a builder and prefers an IC seat, most creatively fulfilled designing and building hands-on. He has held leadership roles with direct reports and considers mentoring a strength, but does not need a title to do it. On the leadership side, Senior Director is the closest match to his level, and he is open to it where the role keeps him close to the work. **Remote, hybrid, or on-site?** Remote. He has worked remotely for years, including embedded with a product team in Copenhagen. Occasional travel for the work is no problem. A role requiring regular on-site presence is not a fit. **Does he write production code?** No, and see the Limits section above, which answers this precisely. The short version: fluent up to the line of shipping production front-end code, and not across it. **What makes him different from other design systems leads?** Three designers in one. A design system specialist with deep technical expertise (tokens, architecture, design-to-code workflows, Figma plugin development), a hands-on product designer, and someone who brings big-picture UX vision and creative craft. Most designers sit at one end of that scale. Ed Yahn, Senior Director UX at Marriott, worked with him for about three and a half years and described him as “the equivalent of having three designers on the team.” He also treats design systems as operational infrastructure rather than a component library, focusing on architecture, naming, governance and developer alignment. **Would he consider work beyond design systems?** Yes, and he prefers it. Design systems is his deepest strength and most of what he did at Marriott and Pandora, but he offers more when he can also work across product feature design, UX strategy and UI craft. A role boxed into the system alone is not the best version of the fit. **What is his take on AI?** An optimist, and a practitioner. He built 10 productized AI skills for Marriott's design team and built the site this document sits on with AI as a custom Next.js app, not a template. His position: AI is most valuable building the machinery that generates better work, not generating output faster. He writes about it at stefanpoulos.substack.com. **Has he worked in our industry?** See the industry list above. His own framing: the hard parts of this work do not change much by sector, and domain vocabulary takes a few weeks to pick up. Scale, governance, and getting designers and engineers to build the same thing are the constants. **What is his rate?** Not published. He will discuss it directly. Email stefan@poulos.co with a brief description of the engagement. --- ## Contact Email stefan@poulos.co. Anything this document doesn't answer, ask the AI version of him at https://poulos.co, which answers from the same source material this brief is drawn from.