Product Design Manager, Design System

We’re looking for an experienced Product Design Manager to lead our Design System team. You’ll guide the vision for the system, foundations, and tools that empower our product designers and engineers to build high-quality, well-designed software. You’ll be responsible for helping your team focus on the user, coaching them through our process, and making sure that they’re solving the right problems with the best solutions. As a critical member of the San Francisco design leadership team, you thrive on cross-functional collaboration, and actively work to improve the people, product, and process on your team and beyond. 

The design team at Asana is a tight-knit, collaborative group of designers who love combining research, data insights, and peer feedback into a user-centered design process. This includes starting from research and discovery to define a problem, through generative ideas and directions, to detailed iterations of interaction design. 

Asana is a fantastic opportunity to join a company that is still small but growing thoughtfully. You'll be working on a meaningful mission alongside some of the best designers, PMs, and engineers in the industry, with backgrounds at well-known tech companies. You'll help foster a decentralized decision making culture where everyone is encouraged to speak up on critical decisions and get involved in the entire product process, from concept to post-launch reflection.

What you'll achieve

• Lead a group of highly talented, senior designers on creating components & usage guidelines for the design system of an award-winning product (read stories on the Asana Design blog)
• Manage a team of designers by mentoring and creating growth opportunities for those on your team
• Work with Design, PM, User Research, and Engineering peers to define the strategy, prioritize the design system roadmap, and ensure that all projects are well defined and high impact
• Connect the dots across experiences and teams to create a cohesive design system and customer experience
• Communicate and align with stakeholders, to keep them informed on the design system team’s progress and goals
• Ensure team members are creating high quality work that delights our customers, helps our teams build more efficiently, and meets company objectives
• Manage relationships with external contractors and agencies to augment our team’s abilities
• Celebrate milestones and measure your team’s success through levers including consistency, efficiency, adoption, and accessibility
• Collaborate with design leadership to evolve our process and frameworks to ensure the design team is creating great, consistent work
• Establish team rituals that ensure long term health and team cohesion
• Advocate for hiring and staffing needs, helping to grow your team, source and interview candidates, and onboard new employees
• Experience career growth and personal development with world-class mentorship and development programs

About you

• 6+ years experience designing and shipping software products that customers love, 2+ years in a people management role
• Track record of building and maintaining design systems for large scale product companies 
• Demonstrated experience mentoring and coaching team members, and leading by example
• Still loves the craft; likes to get hands dirty and contribute as an IC designer from time to time 
• Strong product design sense that allows you to fluidly move from high-level strategic conversation to nitty gritty details
• Focused on maximizing impact for yourself, your team, and your company as a whole
• Approach problems with curiosity, and excitement to learn and grow your skills