Microsoft Design Manager 

United States 

714456939

About the role

As a Design Manager you will lead a team of designers to shape the user experience and quality for the technical assets we develop and publish. Your role involves driving innovation and advocating for a data-driven, customer-centric approach to design. You will be responsible for setting the bar for excellence in experience design, storytelling and narrative design, creating and managing best-in-class Design Systems, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure our assets meet the highest standards of usability and delight. Your leadership will not only influence the design direction but also contribute significantly to the asset strategy and vision.

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 8+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 6+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR equivalent experience (e.g., demonstrated experience working in product orservice design or using design thinking to solve problems).
• 3+ years people management experience.
• 5+ years experience shipping products, services, or games and/or delivering to customers as a result of an end-to-end design process.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 12+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 8+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR equivalent experience (e.g., demonstrated experience working in product orservice design or using design thinking to solve problems).
• 5+ years people management experience.
• 6+ years experience shipping products, services, or games and/or delivering to customers as a result of an end-to-end design process

Product Design M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $137,600 - $267,000 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $180,400 - $294,000 per year.Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:Microsoft will accept applications for the role until July 2, 2024.

People Management

• Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
  • Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
  • Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
  • Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

Product Design

• Creates alignment on schedules and plan definitions, including dependency tracking across the product team. Influences the product strategy and leads others in defining needs of large and/or complex product designs based on multiple factors such as user insights, business needs, and technical goals. Leads team in identifying needs that are not spoken and including them in end-to-end design plan and process. Guides others to develop a synthesis of user insights and compare with data to identify larger issues that may not be apparent for user desires. Influences senior leadership's strategies for distributing product design resources. Collaborates with product owners and development team members to shepherd end-to-end experiences from concept to ship for large and/or complex products.
• Directs others to generate ideation solutions for complex products (e.g., involving many constraints, needing workarounds, requiring holistic view of interconnected systems) to improve product designs. Brings diverse teams together and provides input on the strategic utilization of a variety of perspectives when ideating (e.g., business, experience, technology). Synthesizes complex and challenging ideation solutions to a concise articulation of user wants and subsequent solutions.
• Leads expansive prototyping initiatives involving design complexity (e.g., large scale, involving coordination of multiple groups, higher cost). Provides guidance to other team members about what the prototype should communicate and how to find the right prototype for a problem. Leads prototyping (e.g., large scale, involving coordination of multiple groups, higher cost) for new products as efficiently as possible. Presents to teams (e.g., Design, Engineering), senior leadership, and/or customers to receive feedback and understand user needs. Seeks to understand user needs and propose a design prototype, evaluate its usefulness, and determine next steps to ensure optimal product designs. Ensures prototypes are in accordance with company's brand and guidelines, and leads the invention/improvement of guidelines when existing guidelines are unclear. Recommends tool enablement proposals.
• Leads interactions with key stakeholders (team, Engineering, PM, User Research, etc.) to successfully align design solutions to business, technical, and user requirements. Leads interactions with Engineering to ensure implemented designs align to design specifications. Directs collaboration with developers to iterate further on designs during implementation to ensure optimal designs. Drives negotiations with Engineering and pushes design agenda forward while finding compromises and alternatives. Acts as the owner approving the ship readiness from a design perspective.

Design Components

• Operates as a Design System and reviews of the adoption of the latest design systems (e.g., content templates, icons, form design, user-interface [UI] controls, navigation models, design trends) updates in the industry and/or making a case for acquiring the system. Guides team to ensure products are aligned with company-wide systems. Helps others use the system and drives consistency, alignment, and standards across multiple teams.

• Communicates a compelling, convincing product story to a variety of audiences in a way that inspires excitement and support of the product. Influences for impact and buy in from key stakeholders through storytelling. Coaches teams on storytelling techniques.
• Leads collaboration with creative team members, program managers, and developers (e.g., the triad/quad) across teams/divisions to define and iterate on new and existing product features, as well as to make decisions on behalf of One Microsoft. Collaborates with leadership and team members, creates, and helps the team deliver product design results while also guiding the team's newer members. Influences stakeholders across disciplines. Ensures that feedback is needed, sought out, and asked for to promote optimal product designs. Connects dots between teams to enable collaboration, identifying opportunities to build on the work of others and leverage previous work.

Product Design Leadership

• knowledgeable

Specialty Responsibilities

• Leads the production of visual designs from concept to delivery. Creates, evangelizes, and oversees a variety of visual design documents including mood boards, storyboards, creative briefs, three-dimensional (3D) models, product renderings/visualizations, color and materials design, motion studies, iconography, illustrations, layouts, and redlines for a set of products, tools, and services. Works closely with multiple disciplines on aligned goals. Communicates and executes strategic product/service visual design direction to leaders at all stages from intent to implementation to ensure alignment. Organizes feedback sessions with team members, ensuring appropriate feedback and coaching is given. Champions and sets expectations for brand adherence and promotion of inclusivity principles.
• Identifies and evangelizes for scenarios that will ultimately turn into interaction designs for hardware and/or software-based experiences. Architects a system others can plug into. Serves as an architect over the strategy for a product design and multiple systems. Ensures alignment with other relevant disciplines and teams. Directs team to develop and enhance product user experiences via creation of interaction models and detailed designs for new and existing product features while serving as a liaison between users and products. Guides team to ensure the designs of the products allow the user to complete the desired scenarios in the best possible manner.
• Identifies and evangelizes for scenarios that will ultimately turn into interaction designs for hardware and/or software-based experiences. Architects a system others can plug into and work within. Serves as an architect over the strategy for a product design and multiple systems. Ensures alignment with other relevant disciplines and teams. Directs team to develop and enhance product user experiences via creation of form factor and detailed designs for new and existing product features while serving as a liaison between users and products. Guides team to ensure the designs of the products allow the user to complete the desired scenarios in the best possible manner.

Other

• Embody our and