Sr. UX Design Program Manager

What are the top three things you are looking for in this contingent worker?

1. Bachelor’s degree required. Five or more years of design program, operations, or account management experience in delivering digital solutions.

2. Ability to understand data, analyze results and draw insights.

3. Experience administrating design tools (ex. Figma, InVision, Sketch, Axure, Zeplin, etc), research tools (ex. UserZoom, dScout, Qualtrics, etc.), and/or project management tools (ex. Jira, VersionOne, Quickbase, AirTable, etc) a plus.

Job Summary:

The Sr. UX Design Program Manager creates a work environment that empowers and enables designers and researchers to function seamlessly and do their best work. They organize and manage digital products and services from the ground up; facilitate diverse teams toward clear priorities, unified goals and measures of success; work closely with fellow UX team members to nurture partner relationships and requests; think broadly about systems, software/tools, patterns and process to innovate and improve the operational effectiveness of design and research; apply and support how we scale human-centered design in an agile organization; drive collaboration and learning opportunities to create a healthy, engaging design and research culture.

This role’s initial assignment will have responsibilities for both Design Operations and Research Operations. Working with UX Designers and Researchers you will enable the development, optimization, and scaling of design and research practices, managing and administrating the necessary processes and tools to enable evidence-based design.

Key Responsibilities:

Research Operations & Portfolio Management

• Understand and contribute to partner area business strategies, goals, products, and roadmaps.

• Lead and coordinate new work requests across stakeholders, framing opportunities to effectively prioritize and clearly define the UX engagement.

• Measure and define optimal staffing capacity, and operating models to facilitate healthy collaboration, design quality and workflow efficiency. This includes establishing and facilitating team rituals.

• Manage relationships with internal business and technology partners.

• Track and report on delivery performance and resource capacity.

• Standardize, measure, and optimize UX DesignOps & ResearchOps processes and tools to drive design quality and efficiency, providing operational support, including:

o Governance: support safe, legal, and ethical research & design by following and implementing risk and compliance policies, including guidelines for consent, privacy, and asset/information storage.

o Knowledge Management: help manage the processes and platforms for collecting, interpreting, and sharing insights by building and maintaining a repository for research & design.

o Participant Management: recruit, screen, schedule, compensate, and communicate with research participants and support development of participant pool.

o Research Democratization: empower non-researchers to study users by providing training, coaching, and continuous feedback; ensure democratized research follows best practices.

Talent, Process and Operational Effectiveness

• Care for our humans; lead improvements in hiring, onboarding, personal development and recognition practices.

• Communicate a clear understanding of design activities and value.

• Standardize, measure and optimize our design processes and tools to drive design quality and efficiency.

• Optimally leverage budgets; coordinate UX expense management and reporting.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

This job may have supervisory duties

Preferred Qualifications:

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree required.

• Five or more years of design program, operations, or account management experience in delivering digital solutions.

Certificates, Licenses, Registrations

• Agile Scrum Certification a plus, but not required.

• PMP or equivalent a plus, but not required.

Functional Skills

• Consumer-centric predisposition and demonstrated relationship building experience.

• Polished communication and presentation skills; effective at navigating crucial conversations.

• Ability to understand data, analyze results and draw insights.

• Demonstrated collaborative, experimental and holistic approach to problem solving.

• Ability to work independently and apply strategic, systems thinking to maturing the UX practice.

• Experience organizing and adapting UX team practices within an agile scrum or XP environment.

• Experience administrating design tools (ex. Figma, InVision, Sketch, Axure, Zeplin, etc), research tools (ex. UserZoom, dScout, Qualtrics, etc.), and/or project management tools (ex. Jira, VersionOne, Quickbase, AirTable, etc) a plus.

• Knowledge of best practices for planning and executing human-centered design.

• Comfortable facilitating design thinking exercises (don’t worry if you haven’t done it before, in-house training is provided).