Senior Product Manager Design System & Accessibility

Overview

IBM Software offers a chance to be part of a team that transforms customer challenges into industry-leading solutions. We are an infinitely curious team, always seeking new possibilities, dedicated to creating the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions. Our renowned legacy provides global opportunities for our network of IBMers. We are a team of deep product experts, focused on delivery, excellence, and customer outcomes.

IBM's product and technology landscape includes Research, Software, and Infrastructure. Entering this domain places you at the heart of IBM, where growth and innovation thrive.

About Carbon

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 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. Using the pre-built and universal assets of Carbon minimizes time spent designing and building. Teams can focus on adapting elements to address specific client use cases.

The design system is named Carbon Design System because carbon builds complex structures from simpler compounds. This motif mirrors how our components can combine to create beautifully complex, natural, and intuitive designs.

Your role and responsibilities

Role Overview

The Carbon Design System team is looking for a Product Manager to help deliver Carbon to IBM Software product teams. You will drive the system's backlog of design and development stories through prioritization and proper sizing, and you will support industry-leading software product and cloud services teams worldwide.

This position requires a strong understanding of product delivery and a focus on the needs of the product teams you will be supporting. You will balance unique team requirements with the broader goal of universal, reusable contributions. You should be project-oriented and experienced with cross-disciplinary collaboration. Strong written and verbal communication skills are essential.

A key focus of this role is ensuring that accessibility and WCAG compliance are tracked and integrated across the design system and IBM's product ecosystem. You will work closely with IBM's internal accessibility tooling and reporting systems to monitor compliance status, identify gaps, and drive remediation efforts. You will collaborate with accessibility experts, designers, and engineers to ensure that Carbon components meet or exceed accessibility standards and can be confidently adopted by product teams.

You will also help define and evolve the processes for tracking accessibility metrics, integrating them into the product roadmap, and ensuring that accessibility is treated as a first-class citizen in the design system lifecycle.

Required technical and professional expertise

• Development of product prioritization, roadmap, and key performance indicators
• Audience evaluation through routine touchpoints: surveys, community outreach, etc.
• Creation of value statements and gallery of use cases/examples
• Leadership with cross-functional teams in design and engineering
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Deep understanding of WCAG compliance and accessibility standards
• Experience integrating accessibility requirements into design systems and product development workflows
• Experience adhering to regulatory standards such as WCAG 2.1/2.2
• Ability to advocate for inclusive design and collaborate with accessibility experts, designers, and engineers to ensure Carbon components meet accessibility standards

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Deep understanding of WCAG compliance and accessibility standards
• Experience integrating accessibility requirements into design systems and product development workflows
• Experience adhering to regulatory standards such as WCAG 2.1/2.2
• Ability to advocate for inclusive design and collaborate with accessibility experts, designers, and engineers to ensure Carbon components meet accessibility standards

Equal Opportunity Statement

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.