The Senior Product Design Manager will lead Zendesk's Knowledge team, focusing on creating a best-in-class knowledge platform that powers conversational AI experiences for customers. This role involves setting design strategy, growing and coaching a team of designers, and ensuring design work drives measurable customer and business outcomes across a distributed environment.
Responsibilities
- Define and evangelize design strategy and priorities for Zendesk Knowledge, aligning design work to product outcomes and business metrics
- Lead and scale a team of product designers, setting clear goals, developing career plans, and running hiring and performance processes
- Partner with Product Management, Engineering, Research, Content and Design Systems to scope work, prioritize initiatives, and remove cross-functional blockers
- Drive a research-backed design process: synthesize user research, analytics, and competitive insights to shape experience decisions and roadmap trade-offs
- Ensure high-quality delivery by establishing design standards, review rituals, adoption and contribution to our design system across the team
- Mentor and develop design craft and leadership in the team through coaching, critiques, and structured learning
- Represent design in stakeholder forums and influence executive-level decisions about product direction and resourcing
- Ensure close collaboration with other designers in the AI space to ensure an optimal and consistent end-to-end experience
- Collaborate mostly with teams in Portugal, Denmark, Poland and distributed teams across EMEA, AMER & APAC
Requirements
- 5+ years of professional experience in designing consumer or business SaaS applications
- 5+ years managing and growing design teams, with experience hiring, mentoring, and evaluating designers
- Demonstrable experience translating user research and business goals into product strategy and measurable outcomes
- Proven collaborator: track record working closely with Product, Engineering, Content and Research to deliver shipped products
- Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills; able to present design rationale and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical audiences
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced, distributed environment and prioritizing high-impact work
Preferred Qualifications
- CMS and CRM product experience is a plus
- Prior experience with designing LLM integrations and AI feature workflows
Benefits
- Ownership of the projects you work on and freedom to put your ideas on the table
- Being a part of defining new standards in an emerging space
- Flexible working hours
- Cozy offices
- Hybrid work environment
- Opportunity to learn and grow with a hardworking and passionate team
Work Arrangement
Hybrid — Portugal, Denmark, Poland, EMEA, AMER, APAC — Hybrid experience with purposeful in-person collaboration at Zendesk offices and flexibility to work remotely part of the week; specific in-office schedule determined by hiring manager
Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer. Individuals are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. AI or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications in accordance with company guidelines and applicable law.
