About the role

  • 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.

Job title

Senior Manager, Design Operations

Job type

Experience level

Senior

Salary

$153,000 - $198,000 per year

Degree requirement

Bachelor's Degree

Location requirements

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