Senior Design Operations Manager

Bestow is a leading vertical technology platform transforming the life insurance industry by modernizing and streamlining its processes. The Senior Design Operations Manager will serve as a vital connection between product design and the broader product organization, focusing on implementing AI-driven design operations to enhance team efficiency and effectiveness.

Responsibilities:

• Developing and Managing Design Processes & Workflows
• Spearhead the team’s strategic implementation of AI in the design workflow, defining how designers effectively use new tools for ideation, prototyping, and asset generation
• Identify bottlenecks and implements solutions to help the team scale and move faster without sacrificing quality
• Build scalable design processes and knowledge management that work whether the team is 5 people or 50
• Lead the buildout of emerging Research Operations within a growing product and design team - anchored around AI solutions to centrally manage and unlock insights
• Managing Design Systems, Artifacts, and AI Enablement
• Establish and enforce standards for design files, ensuring consistency and seamless handoff in a hybrid human-AI design environment
• Evaluate, implement, and manage the tool stack, with a focus on instrumenting AI-powered design solutions to drive efficiency
• Stay current on the latest in Design Ops, tooling, and leading the adoption of emerging AI-powered design workflows
• Driving Design Ceremonies & Team Collaboration
• 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 so the team stays connected and aligned
• Managing Design Systems and Artifacts
• Steward our Figma workspace — 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 toolstack the design team uses day-to-day
• 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
• People & Culture
• 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 the design leadership team; help define what career growth looks like for designers at Bestow including leveling guides and review processes
• Reporting on Design Metrics
• Define and track metrics that show how the design team is performing and where we can improve
• Provide design leadership with team planning clarity including regular visibility into team capacity, velocity, and health

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in the product design discipline and/or experience implementing AI solutions for product design/product development processes
• An outstanding grasp of design fundamentals and the value that product designers are uniquely positioned and tasked to deliver to engineering and the product development lifecycle
• Strong understanding of product design and UX processes — you don't have to be a designer, but you speak the language fluently
• Pre-existing experience integrating AI into design workflows
• Knowledge of or experience with UX research operations or research program management
• Exceptional communication skills — you can write clearly, effectively facilitate meetings and manage a room, and translate ambiguity into action
• Hands-on experience with software design tools
• Experience managing Figma workspaces at scale (component libraries, design systems, versioning, file governance, etc.)
• Proven ability to build processes from scratch with buy-in from smart, creative, opinionated team members
• Experience working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and other teams across a company
• Highly organized with a strong attention to detail, without losing sight of the big picture
• Systems thinker – able to track a number of high-level views of work and while still able to speak to granular details
• AI-first attitude – a true believer in the power of AI and excitement about helping build and unleash its potential for designers
• 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
• Knowledge of AI tool implementation in modern design workflows and experience administering project management tools (JIRA, Confluence, Notion, Linear, Asana, etc.)
• Good to have: Experience scaling a design team through a period of rapid growth