Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for UI Coordinator

🎯 Role Definition

The UI Coordinator serves as the operational and design glue between product managers, UX/UI designers, front-end developers and content teams. Responsible for the practical implementation of interface designs, maintaining design systems and ensuring implementation fidelity across platforms, the UI Coordinator drives consistent user interface delivery, enforces accessibility standards, and improves time-to-market through efficient processes and tooling.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

UI / Visual Designer
Junior Product Designer or UX Designer
Front-end Developer / Front-end Engineer

Advancement To:

Senior UI Coordinator / Design Operations Lead
UI / UX Manager
Product Design Lead or Head of Design Ops

Lateral Moves:

UX Researcher
Product Manager
Front-end Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Coordinate cross-functional implementation of UI designs from concept through production, ensuring adherence to design specifications, brand guidelines, and accessibility (WCAG) requirements for web and mobile interfaces.
Maintain, evolve and document the organization’s design system and UI component library (tokens, components, patterns), including versioning, release notes, changelogs and developer adoption guidance.
Translate designer outputs (Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD) into clear, prioritized developer-ready tickets with acceptance criteria, assets, redlines and responsive behavior notes to ensure high-quality handoffs.
Conduct design QA and visual regression checks across browsers and devices to validate pixel fidelity, responsive behaviors, accessibility semantics (ARIA) and interactive states before releases.
Serve as the primary point-of-contact for UI change requests, triage incoming design/implementation issues, prioritize defects with product owners and coordinate timely resolution with engineering teams.
Create and maintain UI documentation, patterns, usage examples, and onboarding guides for internal teams to accelerate consistent UI implementation and reduce ad-hoc design work.
Facilitate regular design-system governance including component reviews, design critiques, and cross-team syncs to align on patterns, nomenclature and technical constraints.
Build and manage an organized asset library (icons, imagery, SVGs, fonts) and ensure designers and developers use approved files and the correct exports for production.
Coordinate localization and internationalization of UI elements, ensuring strings, layout flexibility and design tokens support translated content and right-to-left languages where applicable.
Run and summarize usability or UI validation sessions (moderated or unmoderated), capture actionable UI improvements, and coordinate prioritized design updates with product teams.
Lead sprint-level UI planning: break down design work, estimate effort with designers and developers, assign owners, and track completion to align UI delivery with product schedules.
Monitor and report UI performance and usage metrics (layout shift, load times, feature adoption) and collaborate with engineering and analytics to optimize UI for speed and engagement.
Manage third-party vendor relationships for UI-related services (iconography, component marketplace, accessibility audits), coordinate contracts and ensure deliverables meet internal standards.
Implement and oversee automated visual regression testing and integration with CI/CD pipelines to catch unintended UI regressions early in the release process.
Train and onboard designers, product managers and engineers on the design system, UI best practices, accessibility checklists and tool workflows to increase cross-functional self-sufficiency.
Prepare and deliver status reports, roadmaps and release notes for stakeholders that summarize UI changes, upcoming updates and impacts on existing interfaces.
Drive adoption of design tooling best practices (file organization, component libraries, tokens), and manage tooling integrations (Figma plugins, Storybook, Bit, Storybook docs).
Coordinate content and microcopy handoffs between UX/UI and copy teams, ensuring labels, CTAs and error messaging align with accessibility and localization needs.
Prioritize and manage the UI backlog, balancing technical debt (outdated components, inconsistency) and new product UI work to maximize design-system ROI.
Support front-end developers by clarifying interaction states, animational specs, breakpoint behavior and CSS/utility recommendations to reduce rework.
Act as a UI accessibility advocate: conduct accessibility reviews, coordinate remediation plans, run WCAG audits (AA/AAA where required) and track remediation completion.
Maintain a UI risk register for major releases (breaking components, cross-platform layout changes), advising stakeholders on mitigation strategies and rollback plans.
Collaborate with QA and Product to define UI acceptance criteria for features and to ensure reproducible reproduction steps and evidence for UI issues.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc stakeholder requests for UI guidance, quick prototype polish for demos, and rapid design fixes during release windows.
Assist design leadership with operational metrics and initiatives that improve throughput (cycle time, handoff quality, release frequency).
Contribute to continuous improvement of UI processes, sprint retrospectives and tooling decisions to optimize turnover and quality.
Run periodic audits of product screens to identify UI inconsistencies and produce prioritized remediation plans.
Provide subject-matter input for hiring, interviewing and onboarding new UI/UX team members.
Coordinate small-scale A/B or UI experiments with product and analytics teams and document learnings for future design decisions.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Figma expertise: building and maintaining component libraries, styles, tokens, prototyping and collaborative workflows.
Strong command of design tools such as Sketch, Adobe XD, Illustrator and asset export best practices.
Working understanding of HTML5, CSS3 and responsive layout techniques (flexbox, grid); able to communicate constraints to engineers.
Familiarity with JavaScript frameworks and component-based front-end architectures (React, Vue, Angular) to enable accurate handoffs.
Experience with design system tooling and component documentation (Storybook, Bit, Zeroheight, Lona).
Accessibility knowledge (WCAG 2.1 AA), ARIA roles, semantic markup and assistive technology considerations for UI components.
Visual QA and cross-browser testing expertise, including use of browser devtools, device emulators and visual regression tools.
Experience with version control concepts (Git) and integrating design workflows with engineering repositories and CI pipelines.
Prototyping and interaction specification skills: linking flows, animations, micro-interactions and state diagrams for developer reference.
Analytics and experimentation basics (Google Analytics, Hotjar, Amplitude, Optimizely) to measure UI impact and adoption.
Familiarity with localization processes, handling variable copy lengths, and ensuring UI resilience with translated content.
Experience with project tracking and collaboration tools (Jira, Trello, Asana, Confluence) and creating clear technical tickets.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional communication: able to translate design intent into engineering tasks and explain trade-offs.
Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail — maintains consistency across thousands of screens and components.
Project coordination and prioritization: balances competing requests, technical debt and deadlines while maintaining quality.
Analytical mindset with the ability to interpret UI metrics and user feedback to drive data-informed decisions.
Problem-solving orientation and the ability to de-escalate delivery issues and propose practical mitigations.
Coaching and mentoring abilities to raise team standards in design-system usage and UI implementation.
Clear presenter and facilitator: runs workshops, design reviews and onboarding sessions for diverse audiences.
Adaptability in fast-paced environments and comfort with Agile/Scrum rhythms and changing priorities.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, Information Design, or equivalent experience.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Design, HCI, Computer Science or related field, or professional certification in UX/UI, accessibility or design systems.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Visual Communication or Graphic Design
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Computer Science / Front-end Engineering
Information Architecture

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

2 to 5 years of experience in UI coordination, design operations, front-end development or product/design teams.

Preferred:

3+ years managing design systems, component libraries and cross-functional UI delivery in a product development environment; demonstrable experience working with designers and engineers to ship production interfaces.