Design Operations Manager job description

Job brief

We are looking for a highly organized Design Operations Manager to join our growing product design team and take ownership of our operational strategy. In this role, you will be the conductor of our creative process, managing the tools, systems, and resource planning that enable our designers to produce their best work. You will collaborate closely with engineering, product management, and brand leads to ensure our design ecosystem is scalable, efficient, and well-integrated. If you are passionate about design systems, workflow optimization, and building creative cultures, we would love to have you on our team.

What is a Design Operations Manager?

A Design Operations Manager acts as the strategic backbone of creative teams, defining the processes and infrastructure necessary to deliver high-quality digital products at scale. By managing design systems, tooling stacks, and cross-functional workflows, the Design Operations Manager ensures that design teams remain efficient and aligned with broader business objectives. This role bridges the gap between creative execution and operational excellence, utilizing methodologies like Agile and Design Thinking to reduce project friction and accelerate time-to-market.

What does a Design Operations Manager do?

A Design Operations Manager oversees the operational health of the design organization by maintaining design systems in Figma and managing project intake processes in tools like Asana, Jira, or Monday.com. They facilitate rituals such as design critiques, sprint planning, and quarterly capacity planning, ensuring stakeholders are updated on project statuses and resourcing needs. By gathering data on team velocity and tool utilization, they constantly iterate on internal processes to remove bottlenecks and maintain a consistent, high-velocity design delivery lifecycle.

Key responsibilities

• Manage and evolve our centralized design system in Figma to ensure design consistency across all product touchpoints and feature teams.
• Streamline project intake, prioritization, and resource allocation workflows to ensure timely delivery of design assets and product requirements.
• Facilitate and document design-led ceremonies including design sprints, retrospectives, and cross-departmental critique sessions to foster team transparency.
• Implement and maintain standardized documentation, naming conventions, and file management protocols across all collaborative design environments.
• Partner with engineering leads to define and refine hand-off processes, ensuring design intent is accurately reflected in final code implementations.
• Analyze team performance and operational bottlenecks using data from project management tools to recommend process improvements and toolchain optimizations.
• Lead the onboarding and training of new designers on internal creative processes, tools, and brand governance standards to accelerate productivity.
• Manage vendor relationships and software licensing for design tools, maximizing the ROI of our creative technology stack.

Requirements and skills

• 5+ years of experience in Design Operations, Project Management, or as a senior designer with a strong focus on creative workflows.
• Deep expertise in Figma, including design system management, library administration, and variable/token configuration.
• Hands-on proficiency with project management platforms such as Jira, Asana, or Linear to track design progress and team capacity.
• Strong understanding of the end-to-end product development lifecycle, including integration points between design, engineering, and QA.
• Exceptional ability to synthesize technical architecture requirements into actionable design-friendly documentation and clear project roadmaps.
• Proven experience building and scaling design operations at a technology company, ideally within an Agile/Scrum framework.
• Bachelor’s degree in Design, Project Management, Business Administration, or a related field with a portfolio highlighting operational process improvements.
• Professional certification in PMP, Six Sigma, or similar process improvement methodologies is highly preferred for this role.

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