Maciej Kotula Design Systems Lead

Maciej Kotula Design Systems Lead

Maciej Kotula Design Systems Lead

Design Systems Lead building scalable product foundations across design, engineering, and AI-assisted workflows.

Most recently led design systems work at Phenom, building readiness contracts across React and Angular. Previously led product design work across Netguru and Deutsche Telekom.

About

I'm Maciej — a Design Systems Lead focused on design tokens, multi-framework parity, and design-to-code workflows.

I build design systems as infrastructure — scalable token architectures and readiness contracts that work across React and Angular, and hold up under AI-assisted workflows.

Before systems, I designed the products themselves — banking and fintech, B2B SaaS, and enterprise tooling — for clients including Deutsche Telekom, Samsung, and ECCO.

Most recently at Phenom, I led design systems work across React and Angular — building a three-layer token architecture, a readiness model with explicit quality gates, and a parity model aligning behavior across frameworks, built in close partnership with engineering.

Before that, eight years at Netguru as Lead Designer and Team Leader — leading product design work, mentoring designers, and helping shape quality across complex international projects.

One thing hasn't changed: bringing clarity to complex products, and building the structures that help teams scale with confidence.

Open to Senior+, Lead, Staff, and Principal roles — remote.

Experience

Phenom

Design System Lead

September 2024 – Present

Netguru

Product Designer → Lead Designer & Team Leader

2016 – 2024

Deutsche Telekom

Visual Designer · EntertainTV

2015 – 2016

Amarok Design

Founder & Lead Designer

2010 – 2015

See full CV →

Skills

Design systems architecture

Multi-framework parity

Design tokens & governance

Design-to-code workflows

Product design leadership

Testimonials

I had the pleasure of managing Maciej while he was our design lead on our design system project, and he consistently set a standard of excellence for the entire organization.

Maciej is a remarkably talented designer whose work is always fresh, innovative, and incredibly detail-oriented.

Beyond his design skills, he is highly organized and a great collaborator who bridges the gap between design and development effortlessly.

He was definitely a cornerstone of our team’s success, and any organization would be lucky to have his vision and professionalism on board.

I had the pleasure of managing Maciej while he was our design lead on our design system project, and he consistently set a standard of excellence for the entire organization.

Maciej is a remarkably talented designer whose work is always fresh, innovative, and incredibly detail-oriented.

Beyond his design skills, he is highly organized and a great collaborator who bridges the gap between design and development effortlessly.

He was definitely a cornerstone of our team’s success, and any organization would be lucky to have his vision and professionalism on board.

Shafir Balitsky
Head of Design, Novidea

I highly recommend Maciek as a UX Lead on complex, multi-team product work. I led engineering on our Phenom Design System, and Maciek was the UX partner, he built and owned the Figma source of truth our designers and engineers.

Maciek led with systems thinking, consistency, component logic, and how tokens and patterns scale across teams and brought that same clarity to the broader product experience.

He was also a strong partner to engineering, clarifying edge cases, tightening specs, and helping bridge design intent with implementation so what we shipped stayed trustworthy in production. Beyond traditional design delivery, he explored how to compose new experiences with AI while grounding the work in our design-system components.

Any team building ambitious product experiences, and especially those investing in a mature design system, would benefit from Maciek’s leadership, craft, and collaboration.

I highly recommend Maciek as a UX Lead on complex, multi-team product work. I led engineering on our Phenom Design System, and Maciek was the UX partner, he built and owned the Figma source of truth our designers and engineers.

Maciek led with systems thinking, consistency, component logic, and how tokens and patterns scale across teams and brought that same clarity to the broader product experience.

He was also a strong partner to engineering, clarifying edge cases, tightening specs, and helping bridge design intent with implementation so what we shipped stayed trustworthy in production. Beyond traditional design delivery, he explored how to compose new experiences with AI while grounding the work in our design-system components.

Any team building ambitious product experiences, and especially those investing in a mature design system, would benefit from Maciek’s leadership, craft, and collaboration.

Mayank Chauhan
Product Prinipal Engineer, Phenom

Interests

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Get in touch

Looking for someone to build your design system?

Open to Senior+, Lead, Staff, and Principal roles across design systems, platform UX, and scalable product design.

The fastest way to reach me is email — contact@maciejkotula.pl

Remote-friendly.

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