Senior Design Manager

At Marketplace, our mission is to help readers turn their aspirations into reality. We arm people with trusted advice and guidance, so they can make informed decisions they feel confident in and get back to doing the things they care about most.

• We are an experienced team of industry experts dedicated to helping readers make smart decisions and choose the right products with ease. Marketplace boasts decades of experience across dozens of geographies and teams. The team brings rich industry knowledge to Marketplace’s global coverage of consumer credit, debt, health, home improvement, banking, investing, credit cards, small business, education, insurance, loans, real estate and travel.

About The Role We are hiring a Senior Design Manager to lead a pod within our design organization, owning both the craft quality and the business outcomes of the work shipped by their team. This is a role for a seasoned design leader — someone who has managed senior designers and design leads, shipped work at scale, and earned the judgement that comes from years of operating inside complex, cross-functional environments. You will manage a team of product designers embedded across product verticals, partner closely with product, engineering, research, and editorial, and act as a trusted peer to senior leadership across the business. You will report into the Head of Design and play a key role in shaping how design operates as a strategic function within the organization. If you’ve been doing this long enough to know what good looks like —and how to get a team there — then this role is for you.

Responsibilities

• People Leadership: Manage, coach, and develop a team of product designers. Own career growth, performance conversations, feedback loops, and hiring. Create the conditions where designers do the best work of their careers.
• Craft & Quality: Set and uphold the design quality bar across your pod. Lead critiques, give sharp feedback, and intervene directly on work when it matters. Make sure what ships reflects
• the standard the team is capable of.
• Strategy & Prioritization: Translate company and product strategy into design priorities for your team. Decide what gets worked on, what gets deprioritized, and why — and communicate that clearly upward and downward.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Operate as the senior design partner for product managers, engineering leads, and editorial stakeholders within your pod. Build trust through clarity, judgement, and results — not volume of output.
• Business Outcomes: Own the impact of your team’s work on conversion, engagement, and revenue metrics. Partner with growth and analytics to connect design decisions to measurable outcomes.
• AI-First Practice: Embed AI tooling into your team’s day-to-day workflow — from ideation and prototyping through to production. Help define what “modern design practice” looks like within the organization.
• Process & Rituals: Shape the operating model of the design team — critiques, planning, quality reviews, design-to-engineering handoffs. Improve what isn’t working and protect what is.
• Hands-On Contribution: Step into the work directly when it’s the right call — on the most strategic initiatives, during capacity gaps, or when craft judgement is needed in the room.
• Team Development: Build a culture of feedback, curiosity, and ownership. Run rituals that grow the team’s craft and strategic thinking over time.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience in product design, with a minimum of 5 years in a design management or design leadership role.
• Proven experience managing senior designers, staff designers, or design leads — not just junior or mid-level ICs.
• A track record of developing designers into the next stage of their careers.
• Demonstrated ownership of design work that drove significant, measurable business outcomes —conversion, engagement, revenue, or retention — at meaningful scale.
• Deep craft foundation. You can sit in a critique, review a Figma file, and give the kind of sharp, specific feedback that only comes from years of building and shipping product yourself.
• Experience operating as a peer to senior product, engineering, and commercial leader— holding your ground, shaping strategy, and influencing decisions outside the design team.
• Fluency with modern design tooling (Figma, prototyping tools) and a sophisticated understanding of how AI is reshaping product development workflows.
• Ability to articulate design decisions and trade-offs in plain language to executives, PMs, engineers, and commercial stakeholders — and to hold the room when the stakes are high.
• Remote-first experience with strong asynchronous communication habits.
• You bring people together—articulate vision, build alignment, and foster cross-team collaboration through inspiring narrative.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 12 years experience in product design, with 5+ years in people management
• Proven experience managing senior designers and design leads, not just junior or mid- level ICs
• Portfolio or case studies demonstrating both team outcomes and your own hands-on craft
• Proven ability to coach and develop designers over time.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in marketplace, fintech, comparison, or editorial/media product environments
• Working fluency with AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Figma AI, v0, Lovable) as part of day-to-day practice
• Experience contributing to or governing a design system at scale
• Background in growth, experimentation, or CRO-adjacent design work

Perks

• Competitive compensation package.
• Fully remote work model
• Day off on the 3rd Friday of every month (one long weekend each month)
• Monthly Wellness Reimbursement Program to promote health well-being
• Monthly Office Commutation Reimbursement Program
• Paid paternity and maternity leaves