Design Operations Manager

We’re looking for a Design Operations Manager who brings structure, clarity, and accountability to a fast-moving, multi-disciplinary design team. You won’t be reinventing the wheel, but you will be making sure it rolls smoothly, quietly, and not off a cliff. You care about follow-through, meeting deadlines, and maintaining high standards. You respect craft and taste, even if you’re not the one pushing pixels around at 2 AM.

Your primary focus will be to keep the design pipeline organized and efficient from intake to delivery. You know, like a pilot, except with mockups instead of planes. 

You’ll manage incoming requests, keep project backlogs healthy, run lightweight reviews, and make sure everything is prepped for final sign-off. You’ll act as the connective tissue between design, product, development, and leadership. You’ll ensure that the right information is in the right place at the right time, and that no thread gets lost. Think of it like this: you’re the glue that keeps the creative chaos from becoming boring, distressing chaos. 

You’ll maintain systems like Basecamp, Slack, Figma, and GitHub to keep projects searchable and up to date (and maybe stop people from naming files “final_final_v3_ACTUALFinal.png”). You’ll keep the content inventory and style guide current, coordinate design timelines with product releases, and flag blockers before they become problems. You’ll protect designers’ focus by handling logistics, scheduling, and context sharing so they can stay heads-down on the work.

This role is perfect for someone who thrives on tidy systems, clear communication, and the quiet joy of a completed checklist. You should be comfortable stepping into a variety of design workflows (UI/UX, content, illustration, etc.), even if you’re not producing design work yourself.
You don’t have to be a designer, but you do need to understand how designers work. Familiarity with their tools, rhythms, and processes will help you keep everything running smoothly without getting in the way of the creative flow.

We’ll evaluate candidates across multiple dimensions. Strength in one area can balance less experience in another.

• Experience (3+ years) managing design or creative projects from intake to delivery
• Familiarity with modern digital design workflows (UI/UX, content, PR, illustration)
• Comfortable with tools like Basecamp, Figma, Slack, Notion, and Airtable
• Strong communication and documentation skills (if you love naming things clearly, we already like you)
• Taste-aware: able to recognize when something feels off, even if you can’t fix it yourself
• Highly organized, with a preference for tidy systems and completed checklists over open-ended brainstorming marathons

• The design team always knows what’s next.
• You can show, at any moment, where every project stands.
• Leadership reviews finished work, not half-baked drafts.
• The style guide and content inventory stay current and trusted.
• Bottlenecks are surfaced early, not discovered five minutes before launch.

This is a full-time remote position. We’re a distributed team that communicates primarily through text-based channels (backlogs, wikis, Slack, etc.). Clear, thoughtful asynchronous communication is critical to success in this role. We’re flexible on schedules, but expect at least 4 hours of overlap with the core team each day.