The Carbon Design System is IBM’s open-source design system for products and experiences. With the IBM Design Language primitives at its core Carbon consists of working code design tools and resources and guidelines—all serving and served by a vibrant community of contributors.
A design system is a collection of pre-built reusable assets—components patterns guidance and code—that allows its users to build consistent digital experiences faster. By using the pre-built and universal assets of Carbon the time teams spend designing and building is minimized. Instead of building and re-building basic elements they can spend that time customizing their products to address specific client use cases.
The design system is named Carbon Design System because in nature the element carbon builds complex structures from simpler compounds. This motif mimics how our individual styles and components can combine to make beautifully complex natural and intuitive designs.
Carbon Design System team is looking for a Senior Technical Lead Accessibility to join the team responsible for delivering the design system to IBM Software product teams. This role is dedicated to ensuring Carbon components patterns guidance and code uphold the highest standards of accessibility meet WCAG compliance and strengthen IBM’s ability to serve enterprise clients and public-sector markets where accessibility is a requirement.
This position will define and guide Carbon’s accessibility delivery strategy shape repeatable testing and governance methods and support agile delivery teams adopting Carbon. The Senior Technical Lead will partner closely with product teams designers and engineers to embed inclusive design practices assess and remediate accessibility issues and evolve Carbon’s design tokens UI components and documentation in line with evolving standards and regulations.
This position requires hands-on technical and product experience deep fluency in W3C/WCAG standards the ability to translate accessibility requirements into actionable guidance and a proven track record driving accessibility maturity across large-scale digital ecosystems.
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Proven leadership in accessibility strategy governance and implementation within enterprise-scale systems and platforms including WCAG compliance and inclusive design practices.
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Strong understanding of design systems reusable UI components design tokens pattern libraries and their role in accelerating consistent digital experiences.
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Hands-on experience in front-end development (HTML ARIA CSS JavaScript and React) with the ability to assess component behavior identify accessibility issues and define tactical engineering direction.
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Deep familiarity with industry regulations accessibility standards (including WCAG 2.2) assistive technology expectations and enterprise compliance requirements.
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Demonstrated ability to embed accessibility across product lifecycles: design reviews automated tooling assistive technology testing and governance processes to prevent regressions - with both established and novel accessibility design patterns.
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Experience defining accessibility roadmaps reviewing UX assets in Figma and applying audits/testing frameworks such as the Equal Access Accessibility Checker Lighthouse NVDA and VoiceOver.
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Strong technical writing skills with the ability to create guidance patterns documentation contribution standards and internal education material that scale across large delivery teams.
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Able to quickly assess mid-fi designs for accessibility considerations and give accurate feedback to designers and developers in clear language
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Background working in agile product delivery environments partnering with engineering design QA and platform owners to deliver compliant and inclusive software.
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Experience contributing accessibility expertise within design system governance structures including rule-sets contribution lifecycles component audits and testing gates.
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Prior leadership within a design system platform or multi-product ecosystem where accessibility maturity repeatable practices and measurable compliance were core objectives.
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Experience defining accessibility KPIs setting compliance targets and introducing workflows to reduce defects and prevent regressions across codebases and design assets.
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Professional accessibility certifications (such as IAAP CPACC) and knowledge of assistive technologies user research methods and inclusive design practices.