Bestow is hiring a Senior Design Operations Manager to be the connective tissue between our design team and the broader product organization. In this role, you will build and maintain the systems, processes, and rituals that help designers do their best work. You will act as both a design operations expert and a strategic partner to design leadership, helping the team grow and scale while maintaining craft, collaboration, and speed.
What You'll Do
- Define and champion the Design POV within the product development lifecycle, from intake to delivery.
- Identify bottlenecks and implement solutions to help the team scale and move faster without sacrificing quality.
- Build scalable design processes and knowledge management systems.
- Lead the buildout of emerging Research Operations within a growing product and design team.
- Facilitate and evolve key team rituals: critiques, design reviews, retrospectives, and planning sessions.
- Partner with Product and Engineering to streamline cross-functional workflows and reduce friction.
- Build bridges between embedded designers across squads to keep the team connected and aligned.
- Steward our Figma workspace, including structure, naming conventions, component libraries, and version control.
- Establish and enforce standards for design files to ensure consistency and easy handoff to engineering.
- Maintain a single source of truth for design assets, templates, and documentation.
- Evaluate, implement, and manage the design team's toolstack.
- Create and uphold governance for team libraries, design systems, and strategic artifacts.
- Stay current on the latest in Design Ops, tooling, and AI-powered design workflows.
- Own the function-specific onboarding experience for new design team members.
- Foster a healthy culture of feedback, continuous improvement, celebration, and psychological safety.
- Administratively support design leadership and help define career growth paths, including leveling guides and review processes.
- Define and track metrics that show the design team's performance and areas for improvement.
- Provide design leadership with team planning clarity, including regular visibility into capacity, velocity, and team health.
What We're Looking For
- 5+ years of experience in the product or design discipline.
- 2-3 years specialized in operations, program management, or a similar operational role within a design or product organization.
- An outstanding grasp of design fundamentals and the unique value product designers deliver.
- Strong understanding of product design and UX processes.
- Knowledge of or experience with UX research operations or research program management.
- Exceptional communication skills—clear writing, effective facilitation, and ability to translate ambiguity into action.
- Hands-on experience with software design tools.
- Experience managing Figma workspaces at scale, including component libraries, design systems, versioning, and file governance.
- Proven ability to build processes from scratch and gain buy-in from smart, creative, opinionated team members.
- Experience working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and other teams.
- Highly organized with strong attention to detail, without losing sight of the big picture.
- A systems thinker who can track high-level views while speaking to granular details.
- Comfortable in a fast-moving startup environment where priorities shift and resourcefulness is essential.
- Intense curiosity and dedication towards evolving daily design practices through substantial industry evolution.
Nice to Have
- Knowledge of AI tool implementation in modern design workflows.
- Experience administering project management tools like JIRA, Confluence, Notion, Linear, or Asana.
- Experience scaling a design team through a period of rapid growth.
Technical Stack
- Figma
Team & Environment
You will join a growing design team and report to the Senior Director, Product & Strategy Operations, with strong collaboration with the Director, UX Design.
Benefits & Compensation
- Competitive salary and equity based on role.
- Flexible paid time off and parental leave programs.
- 100% paid-premium option for medical, dental, and vision insurance.
- Lifestyle stipend to support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing.
- Employee-led diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Work Mode
This role offers a flexible hybrid work model with remote options across the US, as well as access to a beautiful, state-of-the-art office in Dallas’ Deep Ellum.
We value diversity at Bestow. The company will hire, recruit, and promote regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, pregnancy or maternity, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law.
