Role Description

This role sits within the Central Design Leadership Team and is integral to the heartbeat of the Design team at Dropbox.  Our Design org is 130+ people across functions and teams and distributed across San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Tel Aviv.  Acting as the operating partner to the VP of Design, you’ll be a critical driver in building up the Design organization’s operational muscle critical to our long term success and scale. 

You’ll be tasked with using your creativity, initiative, operational savvy and resolve to ensure the team is well positioned to execute. You’ll partner with Design leadership across org boundaries to create the business practices and operational infrastructure that frees our teams to deliver great customer experiences, build programs that engage and develop our team, and build connections with the community in meaningful ways. 

And you’ll be driving all this with the support of a growing Design Operations team that supports our ability to connect with customers, actively engages our internal and external community with high value programming, and embeds in our product teams to improve the way we work and how work gets done. You’ll continue to evolve the charter of what Ops does (and doesn’t do) at Dropbox. We want someone who’s been in the trenches before, someone who knows how to see new ways around organizational challenges, and knows how to level up our capabilities to keep pace with the demands of the org.  

Responsibilities

• Closely partner with the VP Design and extended Design Leadership team to help drive decisions, ensure alignment, and connect dots across the work
• Advise on organization wide strategy and planning
• Introduce new practices and programs that enable makers to make delightful customer experiences (and help us sunset the practices that are getting in the way) 
• Implement tools and practices to help the team create, collaborate and communicate better
• Manage the communication strategy within Design to keep the team informed and motivated
• Strike a balance between minimum viable process and allowing for creative freedom
• Lead strategic initiatives in partnership with cross functional working groups
• Own the annual planning and budget preparation process, as well as executive roll-ups
• Maintain a pulse on the Design org, and orchestrate response to problem areas
• Act as liaison and evangelize design with partner groups - HR, Recruiting, Finance, Legal, IT
• Grow and mature the capabilities of a medium sized Design Operations team
• Own the strategy and roadmap execution for your team
• Evolve team structures to optimally reflect changing organizational needs
• Continually improve our people practices - hiring experience, talent management, employee engagement, diversity & inclusion, learning & development, and community programs

Requirements

• You have at least a year of professional experience leading or managing a design team
• A portfolio of relevant design work, executed either by yourself or a team that you led, that conveys an ability to ship successful products that people love
• A user-centered approach to designing software for people
• Experience working with engineers and product managers to drive strategy, vision, and execution
• Experience attracting and hiring design talent
• Comfortable juggling a wide range of responsibilities at the same time
• A collaborative, low-ego approach to working with others