The Design Manager will lead, mentor, and inspire a team of designers to craft exceptional user experiences across Celigo's suite of SaaS products. This role combines hands-on design expertise with strong people leadership and strategic vision. You will oversee the creation of user journeys, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs that align with business objectives and user needs. The ideal candidate will advocate for user-centered design, foster a culture of collaboration and excellence, and help shape the evolution of Celigo's design system and UX processes.
Key Responsibilities
Design Strategy & Execution
- Create design assets such as user journeys, wireframes, service blueprints, prototypes, and detailed high-fidelity UI designs.
- Translate complex workflows into intuitive, elegant experiences that align with business and user goals.
- Champion user-centered design principles, ensuring that decisions are grounded in research and data-driven insights.
- Maintain a high standard for usability, accessibility (WCAG), and design consistency across all touchpoints.
- Apply and contribute to Celigo's component-based design system, ensuring scalability and visual coherence.
User Research & Insights
- Lead and conduct iterative user research to validate product concepts and refine designs.
- Transform research findings into actionable design solutions, leveraging qualitative and quantitative insights.
- Collaborate with researchers and product teams to define testing strategies and measure user experience success.
- Use analytics and user feedback to inform design improvements and innovation.
People Management & Team Leadership
- Manage, coach, and mentor a team of designersproviding guidance on craft, process, and career development.
- Set clear goals and track progress, aligning individual and team objectives with product priorities.
- Facilitate design critiques, encouraging constructive feedback and continuous learning.
- Foster an inclusive and collaborative design culture built on curiosity, trust, and creative excellence.
- Lead hiring, onboarding, and performance management for the design team.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work closely with Product Managers, Engineers, and Content Strategists to define requirements, validate concepts, and deliver cohesive solutions.
- Collaborate with leadership to ensure the design strategy supports the company's mission and customer experience goals.
- Represent the design team in stakeholder discussions, communicating design rationale and trade-offs effectively.
Innovation & Continuous Improvement
- Introduce and experiment with AI-powered design tools to optimize workflows and accelerate design output.
- Stay current with emerging trends in UX, interaction design, and design technology.
- Improve team efficiency through better processes, tooling, and cross-functional collaboration.
- Balance hands-on design contributions with strategic oversight to ensure both vision and execution excellence.
Skills & Qualifications
- 8+ years of experience designing user experiences for digital products, including 3+ years in a formal people management role.
- Proven track record of designing and shipping complex B2B or SaaS applications.
- Expertise in Figma/FigJam and proficiency with modern design, research, and prototyping tools.
- Strong foundation in information design, UX heuristics, and user-centered design principles.
- Experience working in Agile or iterative development environments.
- Demonstrated ability to manage and inspire creative teams while balancing multiple priorities.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to advocate for design decisions.
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Design, HCI, or a related field (preferred).
- Experience with motion design, HTML, CSS, JS, or AI/ML-enhanced design tools is a plus.
