Design & Research Operations Lead

Role: Design & Research Operations Lead

Location: Abu Dhabi   

Role Purpose: 

• The Senior Design & Research Operations Coordinator is responsible for improving the effectiveness, visibility, and scalability of the Design & Experience function by managing design operations, research operations, tools, capacity, workflows, reporting, and governance.

• The role acts as the central operational lead for the design organization, working closely with the Head of Design & Experience, designers, researchers, product teams, vendors, and delivery partners to ensure work is planned, distributed, tracked, and delivered efficiently.

Key Accountabilities of the role:         

• Own design team capacity planning and work distribution, ensuring workload is visible, balanced, and aligned to business priorities.

• Manage Jira workflows and operational boards, including sprint planning, intake management, status tracking, workflow administration, and reporting.

• Provide capacity, utilization, and delivery dashboards that give leadership clear visibility of team workload, priorities, risks, and resource needs.

• Coordinate design and research tool administration, including Jira, Figma, Confluence, Microsoft 365 access, license management, renewals, and payment coordination.

• Support budget tracking and vendor management for tools, agencies, research partners, procurement activities, contracts, and renewals.

• Lead research operations support, including participant recruitment, research scheduling, logistics, governance, consent management, repository management, and customer panel maintenance.

• Manage design team onboarding and offboarding, ensuring employees, contractors, interns, and coordinators have the right access, documentation, tools, and process guidance.

• Maintain operational documentation in Confluence, including ways of working, workflow guidance, templates, governance standards, and process updates.

• Support asset and design system governance, ensuring shared files, templates, libraries, and operational standards remain organized and accessible.

• Coordinate with vendors and agencies to support smooth execution of design and research activities, including timelines, access, delivery tracking, and budget control.

• Identify opportunities for operational improvement and recommend practical ways to improve team efficiency, utilization, reporting, and governance.

• Guide interns or junior coordinators, helping them follow team processes and maintain high standards of operational execution.

Specialist Skills / Technical Knowledge, Technical Competencies Required for this role:

• Proven experience in Design Operations and Research Operations within a product, design, digital, or enterprise environment.

• Advanced knowledge of Jira, including workflow administration, sprint planning, capacity management, intake tracking, and dashboards.

• Strong working knowledge of Figma, including workspace administration, team access, license management, file organization, and design asset governance.

• Proficiency in Confluence for documentation, knowledge management, process governance, and team ways of working.

• Strong knowledge of Microsoft 365, including Teams, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and SharePoint for operational coordination and reporting.

• Experience in resource forecasting and workload planning, with the ability to translate capacity data into clear recommendations.

• Understanding of Agile delivery practices and how design, research, product, and technology teams collaborate across sprints.

• Experience with procurement, renewals, vendors, and budgets for tools, software, agencies, and research partners.

• Knowledge of research operations processes, including participant recruitment, scheduling, logistics, governance, consent management, repository maintenance, and customer panels.

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to coordinate across design, product, technology, procurement, finance, and vendor teams.