Design Manager

This role is a cross between a solutions architect (non-eng) and tooling strategy and operations manager, where your work will be focused on accelerating the design teams' ability to ship new, high-quality experiences for its global customers. You will be responsible for helping to identify workflow efficiencies and establishing standard methodologies in how we use our tools and expanding the toolset to keep us innovating.

You will report to the Global Head of Design Operations, and work closely with her to ensure the team strategy is aligned to the needs of Spotify Design and the wider Design Ops strategy and framework.

What you'll do

• Working with design and several cross-functional teams including product managers, engineers, designers, UX writers, researchers, and data scientists, you will have a broad array of responsibilities focused on increasing designer efficiency, decreasing product design tooling fragmentation, and leading programs sought at improving product quality.
• Set the vision and strategy for the team, keeping everyone motivated and inspired.
• Evaluate and advance programs that improve product design efficiency across disciplines as well as facilitate the organizational change which comes with it.
• Lead and evolve a robust and scalable ecosystem of design tools, including the management of our software licenses, the development of customized tooling, plugins and integrations, and accessibility to centralized resources and frameworks.
• In collaboration with our design systems, UX writing systems, and other related teams, ensure tight tooling integration between our software, design systems, and other customized tools and plugins.
• Help to define design quality heuristics and advance ways of working for designers, and implement processes for assessing quality against established heuristics.
• Instrument measuring and build dashboards for tooling usage (ie DAU/MAU, meaningful actions taken, etc) quality scores (outcome of quality assessment based on heuristics) designer workflow satisfaction and efficiencies
• You’ll support and grow the careers of the design program managers and design technologists on the team.

Who you are

• You have extensive experience running large, cross-functional programs working with both design and engineering teams and proven critical thinking, and leadership.
• You are focused and thorough. You understand and trust the creative process and bring focus to the unknown. You are able to shepherd concepts from idea to production, encouraging exploration and feedback along the way.
• You bring clarity, defining goals and success measures, freeing up lines of communication, identifying and removing blockers, encouraging collaboration, and most importantly, continuously looking for ways to improve how we work
• You’re highly organized and communicative. You can stay on top of many projects happening concurrently and can easily communicate status at a moment’s notice.
• You’re a great communicator. You confidently and coherently communicate across disciplines and levels within the organization.
• You care about delivering great design. You fight for the right process to achieve the perfect balance between quality and speed.
• You’re flexible, and use your judgment to apply the model and approach that best fit with the context.