Client: Sofi
Job Title
Senior Manager of Product Design for Design Systems
Location: CA, US– Seattle
Job Title
Senior Manager of Product Design for Design Systems
Location: CA, US– Seattle
Job Description
The team
The Design Systems team at SoFi plays a critical role in shaping cohesive, scalable, and delightful product experiences across our financial ecosystem. Formed only about 1.5 years ago, this small but mighty team is dedicated to building and maintaining Pacific—our design system consisting of foundational elements such as components, guidelines, patterns, and tooling. Pacific empowers product teams to design and develop efficiently. Our mission is to accelerate innovation and foster collaboration through a robust, intuitive design system that amplifies quality, creativity, and speed.
The role
As the Senior Manager of Product Design for Design Systems, you'll define and lead the vision, strategy, and execution of Pacific. Your role is crucial in driving consistency, scalability, and design excellence throughout SoFi’s growing product portfolio. You'll collaborate closely with cross-functional leaders across Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Operations to ensure Pacific meets the evolving needs of our products and users. This role also requires hands-on individual contributor work, actively designing and directly contributing to Pacific across both mobile and web app platforms. As a manager, you’ll cultivate and mentor a talented design systems team, champion design system adoption, and actively shape the future of product design at SoFi.
Responsibilities:
The Design Systems team at SoFi plays a critical role in shaping cohesive, scalable, and delightful product experiences across our financial ecosystem. Formed only about 1.5 years ago, this small but mighty team is dedicated to building and maintaining Pacific—our design system consisting of foundational elements such as components, guidelines, patterns, and tooling. Pacific empowers product teams to design and develop efficiently. Our mission is to accelerate innovation and foster collaboration through a robust, intuitive design system that amplifies quality, creativity, and speed.
The role
As the Senior Manager of Product Design for Design Systems, you'll define and lead the vision, strategy, and execution of Pacific. Your role is crucial in driving consistency, scalability, and design excellence throughout SoFi’s growing product portfolio. You'll collaborate closely with cross-functional leaders across Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Operations to ensure Pacific meets the evolving needs of our products and users. This role also requires hands-on individual contributor work, actively designing and directly contributing to Pacific across both mobile and web app platforms. As a manager, you’ll cultivate and mentor a talented design systems team, champion design system adoption, and actively shape the future of product design at SoFi.
Responsibilities:
Define and drive the strategy, vision, and execution of SoFi’s design system, Pacific, including components, tooling, guidelines, and governance.
Collaborate closely with product, engineering, and research leaders to ensure Pacific addresses current and future business needs, including integration of advanced capabilities such as AI and LLM.
Perform hands-on design and actively contribute individual components, patterns, and improvements to Pacific across web and mobile platforms.
Foster design system adoption across all product areas by championing its value, providing resources, training, and advocacy.
Ensure high-quality, consistent, and accessible product experiences by setting and enforcing design standards and best practices.
Help build a world-class app experience by evolving a design system that fosters innovation and raises the quality bar.
Mentor, coach, and inspire your team of designers, helping them grow professionally and contribute effectively.
Serve as a thought leader, advocating for design system excellence and influencing strategic decision-making across the company.
Continuously evolve and refine Pacific through feedback, analytics, user research, and best practices.
Qualification And Experience
10+ years of professional experience working with design systems or successfully shipping consumer-facing products and features, or a combination of both.
3+ years leading and managing high-performing design teams, with a proven track record of growing talent.
Deep expertise in designing, scaling, and maintaining complex, modern design systems across responsive web, iOS, and Android platforms.
Background or experience in visual design best practices—you understand what makes great design and know how to achieve it.
An impeccable eye for detail—you know the little things matter.
Excellent communication skills, capable of articulating and advocating design system strategies to stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Marketing, and executive leadership.
Proficiency with design tools such as Figma and Adobe Creative Suite.
Experience with Agile methodologies and collaboration tools (Jira, Confluence).
Demonstrated ability to leverage data analytics, user research, and testing to inform and validate design decisions.
A portfolio (URL or PDF) demonstrating expertise in product design and design systems.
Even Better
Experience working on personal finance products
Experience shipping high quality & beloved software applications
Design Process & Development Framework
- Optimize and streamline workflows between Content, Creative, and Web teams
- Identify repetitive tasks and propose opportunities for automations
- Manage Creative queue, provide ongoing support and training to teams regarding new processes
- Build dashboard reporting to monitor and analyze team workload capacity to identify areas for optimization
- Analyze and evaluate design processes and workflows to identify areas for improvement and optimization.
- Maintain design libraries and style guides to ensure consistency and coherence across all design projects.
- Coordinate project schedules, track progress, and communicate project updates to stakeholders.
- Partner with the PMO team to streamline cross-functional workflows to ensure teams are working on the highest priority projects.
Insert Comments
I'm a certified Scrum Master
Certified in Design Thinking - IXDF
- Agile / Waterfall / Wagile
Older Development Cycle for Microsoft OneCare.
Managing Design Projects - Schedules, Tracking, Scorecards, Issues/Risks, Stakeholder communication
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Process Improvement - Change Management, Prototype model
Tracking and Reporting -Tracking, Scorecards, Issues/Risks, Stakeholder communication
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Insert Comments
2013 UX Endgame schedule
Kindle Fire Tablets Executive Review Model
Carnival Experiences Projects
Cross Functional Alignment - UX and UX Ops - Change Management, Dev Handoff, UX Audit/Bug Bashes
Tablets UX Program Schedule
Change Management
>> Eng spec handoff
UX Audit Bug Bashes
Tools and Process Optimization - Atlassian (JIRA, Confluence), Assana, Slack, Figma
Insert Comments
>> Insert JIRA configuration for Kindle Fire tablets
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>> Insert JIRA configuration for Kindle Fire tablets
UI Path Figma Dashboard
Note: Each row is a product, Green thumbnails are a UX Story with a complete Design Thinking Process, Blue thumbnails - Task based UX, Black with purple = UX Epic contains schedule, Scorecards
Note: Each row is a product, Green thumbnails are a UX Story with a complete Design Thinking Process, Blue thumbnails - Task based UX, Black with purple = UX Epic contains schedule, Scorecards
UI Path Design Cycle and Figma/JIRA alignment
Amazon Digital Product Group - DS Ember v1
Unity Design System
Development Framework - Agile / Waterfall
• Facilitate team scrum ceremonies (stand-up, sprint planning, retros, etc)
- Software development experience (Agile)
I'm a certified Scrum Master
• Facilitate team scrum ceremonies (stand-up, sprint planning, retros, etc)
- Software development experience (Agile)
I'm a certified Scrum Master
Workflow - Milestones, Change Management
• Evolve, document and model team mechanisms
• Evolve, document and model team mechanisms
Description text
Business Review / Schedules - workback plans
• Compose design program PRFAQ’s, business review docs, and work-back plans
- Navigation for complex organizations
- Navigation for complex organizations
