Design Program Manager

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Develop and manage the core operational rhythm for Product Design, which includes weekly updates, critiques, design evaluations, quarterly planning, and follow-through on decisions.

• Design streamlined systems that clarify priorities, milestones, dependencies, risks, and ownership across various product domains.

• Create effective engagement models between Design, Product, Engineering, Research, and Data, ensuring teams are informed on collaboration timing and methods.

• Enhance launch preparedness by assisting teams in identifying quality risks, clarifying trade-offs, and determining readiness for shipping.

• Collaborate with design systems leaders to reinforce craft practices, shared standards, and the adoption of reusable patterns across product teams.

• Provide design leadership with enhanced visibility into capacity, resource constraints, delivery risks, and operational bottlenecks as the organization expands.

• Minimize recurring urgent issues and minor project management challenges by transforming informal coordination into systematic workflows.

• Work alongside the centralized program management office and Product/Engineering operations, while advocating for the needs of Product Design.

• Act as the operational foundation for Research, managing consent processes and incentive distribution to facilitate researchers in running concurrent programs on a large scale.

• Help connect various time zones (PST, EST, and IST) and management levels to enhance the visibility of design team activities.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 7 years of experience in design program management, design operations, product operations, technical program management, or a similar role supporting product/design/engineering teams.

• Experience in a fast-paced product environment where priorities shift rapidly and processes support the work rather than dominate it.

• A deep understanding of product design to enhance critiques, reviews, design quality rituals, and delivery workflows without needing to make design decisions.

• Excellent at transforming ambiguity into operational clarity: including agendas, decision logs, milestone plans, dependency maps, status systems, escalation paths, and practical rituals that are genuinely utilized.

• Ability to build trust with designers while maintaining credibility with product managers, engineers, researchers, and data partners.

• Skilled at diagnosing issues that arise from unclear ownership, weak prioritization, poor communication, missing information, unrealistic timelines, or actual design gaps.

• Communicate with clarity and composure, particularly when teams are moving quickly, trade-offs are challenging, or priorities are in flux.

• Comfortable operating at various levels: shaping engagement models one moment and tidying up a disorganized project tracker the next.

• Possess strong judgment regarding when to impose structure, when to simplify, and when to step back from the team's activities.

🏝️ Benefits

• Health insurance

• 401(k) matching

• Flexible work hours

• Paid time off

• Remote work options