At Microsoft, we have bold ambitions: Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. To make that a reality, Microsoft’s Digital Transformation Studios DesignOps team is charged with driving the strategy that turns a product vision into action. How? By designing inclusive environments that promote creative exploration and building productivity frameworks that allow Design to operate at the peak of efficiency and effectiveness. 

Our team's vision is to create professional, seamless, and friction-free experiences that enable our customers to work less and accomplish more. We strive to transform Microsoft’s powerful and complex technologies into experiences that customers will love.  

  

We research, design, and build Azure Purview, a unified data governance solution that helps our customers manage and govern their on-premises, multicloud, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) data. 

We are looking for a customer focused DesignOps Program Manager to help define and drive process and operations for teams consisting of Interaction Design, User Research, and Content Design, and to collaborate across multiple organizations including Design, Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, and our Senior Leadership.  

The ideal candidate knows how to bring the best design strategy and process together across multiple teams and workstreams. You will own specific touchpoints and process flows, and help facilitate communication between Design team members, product leadership and stakeholders. You will drive product and studio-wide processes in often changing and ambiguous environments, and act as the glue that keeps our team running smoothly. Most importantly, you will continually advocate for our users and champion industry-leading, inclusive, user-centered design. And as a leader in Azure Purview, you’ll keep a broad view of the portfolio to ensure we’re delivering world-class user experience across the product ecosystem. 

  

DesignOps manages key areas: 

  

Design Program Management— work closely with our Studio Manager and Interaction Design, User Research, and Content Design Leads to drive our operational strategy and raise the bar of our practice. This includes building and overseeing our UX roadmap, and supporting organizational development efforts such as hiring, onboarding, and career development. 

  

Design Operations—partner with leadership across the product studio, and work closely with program managers, engineers, designers, researchers, and content to develop systems for how we work. Explore better ways to prototype creative solutions, ensuring we are building the best solutions for the right problems at the right time for our customers.  

  

You will be responsible for creating efficiencies in our design process, the goal, to enable designers, researchers, and content designers to stay focused on delivering high quality work. This includes staff and resource planning, vendor management, and everything else that goes into delivering the work that our team does. 

Responsibilities

Responsibilities 

  

As a DesignOps Program Manager, you will have the following responsibilities: 

Drive team rhythm of business and operations and direct the day-to-day operations of the design team 

Schedule and facilitate meetings and design reviews to maximize the team’s time and effectiveness 

Build and refine multidisciplinary process for maximum efficiency and quality output 

Forecast resourcing needs and lead conversations with leadership on resource asks 

Identify capacity and forecast for design workloads 

Manage team backlog including work items, scope, and requirements 

Negotiate scope and priority with product leadership 

Define the metrics used to measure success 

Keep a pulse on team health and morale, and generate positive energy 

Be an advocate for human-centered design and research 

Scale the DesignOps expertise across geographies 

Qualifications

Qualifications 

  

Required Qualifications: 

 

5 years of relevant experience – the successful candidate demonstrates impact in Design Operations, UX Program Management, cross functional leadership  

Experience managing projects and coordinating the efforts of multiple teams across the business 

Self-starter with demonstrable understanding of user experience and design 

Understands how to utilize design specialties and how/when to integrate with partnering teams 

Customer-centric mindset with a solid understating of the importance of qualitative and quantitative research 

Familiarity and working knowledge of current design or management tools (Figma, Sketch, Invision, Adobe suite, Jira, Azure DevOps, and others) 

Awareness of inclusive design and how it supports Microsoft's mission 

Willingness to question established thinking in pursuit of better outcomes 

Familiarity with Agile and Lean methodologies 

  

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. 

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Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.