What are the responsibilities and job description for the Sr. Writer - Design System Documentation and Brand Guidelines position at generalmotors?
Job Description The Role We’re seeking a highly skilled writer with experience creating structured, scalable documentation for design systems and brand guidelines. In this role, you’ll help define how GM documents and communicates its design language across web, mobile, vehicle, and broader brand touchpoints. You will write the guidance that supports our design system and visual identity at scale—from components, patterns, templates, and tokens to logo usage, color, typography, grid, composition, and motion. You bring a systems-minded approach to writing, with a strong instinct for clarity, structure, and usefulness. Your work simplifies complexity into practical guidance, enabling teams to make consistent and confident decisions. You also bring a strong understanding of how AI can support documentation—both in how content is structured and in how AI can be used as a tool to help scale content creation, establish best practices, and make our documentation more reusable and future-ready. You’ll play a key role in shaping the written foundation of GM’s design system and brand expression—ensuring our documentation is clear, actionable, and aligned across products and platforms. What You'll Do Write and maintain clear, structured documentation for design system components, patterns, templates, and foundations. Develop and evolve brand guideline content for logo usage, lockups, color, typography, grid, composition, motion, and related visual identity elements. Translate complex design and systems thinking into simple, useful guidance for designers, engineers, marketers, and agency partners. Partner with design leads, design systems teams, the Accessibility team, engineers, product, research, and brand strategy to ensure documentation reflects current intent and implementation reality. Help define the information architecture, governance, and editorial standards for design system and brand documentation. Create usage guidance, principles, do’s and don’ts, examples in use, and supporting rationale that improve adoption and reduce ambiguity. Write directly in tools such as Figma, documentation platforms, and content systems to support real workflows and handoff. Help define best practices for creating documentation that works for both human readers and AI-enabled systems, reducing duplication and making content more reusable over time. Assess and help shape documentation tools, workflows, and processes that improve quality, consistency, and scale. Support the development of a cohesive Brand Center and documentation ecosystem that unifies brand and product guidance. Review and refine existing documentation for clarity, consistency, tone, and quality. Contribute to naming, terminology, and content frameworks that strengthen alignment across web, mobile, and vehicle experiences. Using AI tools for content development, AI-readiness, and prototyping Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications) Strong portfolio demonstrating exceptional writing and editing craft across design systems, UX documentation, brand guidelines, or related systems-based work. Experience writing structured guidance for design systems, digital products, or brand standards. Ability to organize complex information into clear, intuitive documentation and frameworks. Strong understanding of visual design, interface design, and the role of documentation in scaling quality. Experience collaborating closely with designers, engineers, and cross-functional stakeholders. Excellent editorial judgment with strong instincts for clarity, hierarchy, tone, and consistency. Comfort working in Figma and other collaborative documentation environments. Strong sense of ownership and ability to create structure in evolving or ambiguous spaces. Experience establishing or contributing to standards, templates, governance, or content systems. Ability to balance precision with pragmatism and make guidance useful in real- world workflows. What Will Give You A Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications) A passion for clear, structured writing that helps systems scale. The ability to translate complex ideas into practical guidance teams can use with confidence. A sharp eye for clarity, consistency, hierarchy, and craft. Curiosity about visual identity, interface design, documentation systems, and the role writing plays in shaping quality experiences. Strong appreciation for typography, grids, visual language, and design craft across brand identity and UI design. A collaborative mindset and the ability to influence quality and alignment across internal teams, external partners, and agencies. About GM Our vision is a world with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion and we embrace the responsibility to lead the change that will make our world better, safer and more equitable for all. Why Join Us We believe we all must make a choice every day – individually and collectively – to drive meaningful change through our words, our deeds and our culture. Every day, we want every employee to feel they belong to one General Motors team. Benefits Overview From day one, we're looking out for your well-being–at work and at home–so you can focus on realizing your ambitions. Learn how GM supports a rewarding career that rewards you personally by visiting Total Rewards resources. 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