Hybrid Senior Manager, Design Operations

at Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence

• Job title: Senior Manager, Design Operations
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: $153,000 - $198,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Plano, United States

About the role

• Senior Manager of Design Operations overseeing design, research, and strategy teams at Yum Digital & Technology. Driving operational maturity and tooling consolidation across various platforms and projects.

Responsibilities

• Establish and lead the team operating cadence, including regular ceremonies such as design reviews, critiques, all-hands, milestone showcases, and retrospectives.
• Partner with design leadership to manage team-wide communications, meeting structures, planning cadences, and operational documentation.
• Drive visibility and accountability across strategic initiatives, design goals, and cross-functional engagements by managing progress tracking and alignment checkpoints.
• Help foster a cohesive and inclusive team culture through operational rituals, team engagement strategies, and internal storytelling.
• Lead the consolidation and governance of Figma across the organization, including shared libraries, permission models, taxonomy, and maintenance practices.
• Own the strategy, configuration, and administration of core design and research tools (e.g., Figma, UserTesting, Miro, Dovetail, Jira, Confluence), ensuring reliability, scalability, and adoption.
• Define access protocols, system roles, and training resources for tool usage across multi-disciplinary teams.
• Manage vendor relationships for design and research platforms, including contracting, license procurement, renewals, and cost forecasting.
• Partner with Legal, Finance, Procurement, and IT to ensure tool compliance, streamline onboarding/offboarding processes, and optimize spend.
• Audit existing tool usage to reduce redundancy, improve ROI, and guide long-term platform strategy.
• Build and scale intake, prioritization, and workflow systems to support how design work is requested, resourced, tracked, and delivered across product spaces.
• Standardize project management practices across design pods and functions, tailoring them to meet the needs of discovery, delivery, and strategy teams.
• Maintain clear and current process documentation, change logs, and learning resources that support team onboarding and evolution.
• Serve as a key operational partner to leaders in Product, Engineering, Brand, Franchise Ops, and Research—connecting design workflows to broader planning cycles and delivery milestones.
• Anticipate and coordinate cross-functional dependencies and roadblocks to keep execution on track and aligned with business goals.
• Help shape how the design team interfaces with the broader organization through repeatable engagement models and shared accountability frameworks.

Requirements

• 10+ years of relevant experience in design operations, program management, product ops, or operational leadership within creative or digital organizations.
• Experience driving enterprise-wide tooling consolidation (especially Figma) and managing the administration and governance of creative and research tools.
• Demonstrated success managing vendor relationships, procurement workflows, contracts, and licensing budgets.
• Strong operational planning and facilitation skills—able to lead team cadences, coordinate across functions, and translate vision into action.
• Deep understanding of design methodologies, product development life cycles, and how to scale human-centered design practices.
• Known for creating clarity, instilling structure, and enabling others to execute with excellence and autonomy.
• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree or equivalent experience preferred.