Summary

The team

We’re looking for an experienced Sr. Design Program Manager to join our Design Operations team at Kraken and play a crucial role in shaping the future of building wealth in crypto. The Design Operations team sits within the Design and Research organization and is responsible for managing the team’s business operations, ensuring design excellence, and helping to shape and drive the team’s culture, craft, and priorities. 

This team is still relatively new at Kraken, so we need this person to help build the team as well as shape and evangelize what it can be. Join us if you feel excited about contributing to our mission by creating intuitive and aesthetically excellent user experiences. We have an open and trusting team culture where we share candid and honest feedback to achieve the best results.

The opportunity

1. Act as a bridge between the design team and the engineering and product management teams, ensuring inter-dependencies are clear and well-planned
2. Identify and resolve potential collisions between different product teams, design teams, and features
3. Own team rituals across the design and research organization, ensuring important stories, updates, and work are shared
4. Manage the design team's operational expenses, justifying costs and managing vendors
5. Develop and manage new vendor relationships, including creating legal documentation for new programs and tools
6. Collaborate with design & research leadership in key project decision-making, including requirements gathering, scheduling, resource allocation, and coordination of teams and approval processes
7. Contribute to the product direction by understanding the product strategy and supporting the design team to deliver against it
8. Identify team needs and gaps, and implement new processes, tools, documentation, and asset management solutions
9. Integrate strategy, business goals, design, execution, technology, and customer needs to create cohesive outcomes
10. Provide visibility and updates on current projects, resource utilization, team performance, and product health
11. Manage timelines and resources in collaboration with product management and marketing, ensuring teams can deliver work when and where it is needed
12. Support the designers and the wider team in maintaining optimum efficiency and wellbeing
13. Develop and create processes to manage, prioritize, and track design requests

Skills you should HODL

1. Demonstrated experience in leading design operations teams in agencies or in-house for mid-sized to large design teams
2. Experience working with or managing design systems and design systems teams
3. Deep experience working with creative/design teams, understanding how to integrate processes with creative minds
4. Experience working with both product and marketing design teams and helping to build bridges between them
5. Basic understanding of qualitative and quantitative research best practices
6. Experience working with creative processes and supporting designers to do their best work
7. Ability to understand complex programs, scope and prioritize projects, define schedules, and work independently
8. Experience in managing a large budget and hiring roadmaps
9. An understanding of design tools that designers need to do their best work and experience with design prototyping
10. A passion for cryptocurrencies and onboarding the world into them through fantastic, intuitive, and useful design solutions

Nice to haves

1. A user of our products
2. A user of other investment and trading products in the crypto space
3. Experience working in crypto, financial products or trading platforms

Skills

• Leadership
• Strategic Thinking
• Team Collaboration