Senior Manager, Product Design - Platform Engineering

Job Description

The Netflix Platform Engineering team drives business growth and innovation through a robust infrastructure platform essential to Netflix's scale and operations. The platform empowers engineers, data, and machine learning practitioners to achieve unparalleled productivity, offering cloud infrastructure, software development, data analytics, research, experimentation, and AI capabilities. It delivers intuitive experiences, streamlined workflows, and intelligent automation that enhance user experience and operational excellence. Designed for reliability, performance, security, and compliance, the platform adapts effortlessly to evolving business needs.

As the Senior Manager of Product Design, you will lead a team of senior and staff product designers in the evolution of our technical product portfolio, ensuring coherent user experiences and solving for end-to-end journeys through user-centric design. You will guide the team to craft impactful experiences, setting a clear design vision aligned with business and product goals. Leveraging your expertise in systems thinking, interaction, visual design, user insights and research, you will elevate strategic thinking and design craft within your team, fostering an inclusive environment that encourages diverse perspectives. Your technical knowledge will be key in navigating the platform landscape and advocating for design's value in the organization.

As a thought leader, you will identify strategic opportunities and influence the platform's vision. You will spearhead the shift towards dynamic, AI-enabled experiences, creating contextual insights, recommendations, and guidance tailored to the user's journey, enhancing our platform's competitive advantage for Netflix. You excel at building partnerships and collaborating with cross-functional teams to build deep business context and trust, ensuring alignment and shared goals.

In this pivotal role, you will oversee product design across the entire platform. Your leadership will shape the future of our platform, supporting Netflix's mission to entertain the world.

What You Will Do

Lead, Grow, and Inspire a High-Performing Team
• Continue to cultivate a high-performing team of senior and staff product designers, fostering a culture of excellence and inclusivity.
• Mentor and coach designers to enhance their skills in visual design, interaction principles, strategic thinking, business acumen, collaboration, data-driven design, and user insights and research.
• Provide strategic clarity and optimize project prioritization and resource allocation to enhance team efficiency and deliver impactful, user-centered experiences.

Drive Strategic Vision and Alignment
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners to establish and communicate a clear design vision and strategy that aligns with business and product goals, ensuring coherent user experiences.
• Contribute to strategic decisions regarding the future direction of Netflix's platform and technical products, balancing user-centricity with business needs.
• Tackle challenges using data and intuition to make informed choices amid ambiguity.

Champion User-Centered Design and Innovation
• Establish design standards and processes for consistency and quality, implementing user-centered design and systems thinking methodologies to enhance user satisfaction and usability.
• Integrate design thinking into the broader organization, introducing scalable practices that drive innovation, efficiency, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
• Foster design-led innovation by supporting initiatives that bring new ideas and improvements to the product.

Enhance Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Strengthen partnerships with engineering, product, and data science teams, ensuring design is a proactive and equal partner in strategic discussions and decision-making.
• Facilitate effective communication and collaboration across domains, connecting the dots between different product areas to ensure cohesive and integrated solutions.
• Develop and nurture relationships with stakeholders to align on priorities and execute product roadmaps effectively.

Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement
• Encourage feedback and continuous learning, supporting designers in their professional growth, and actively seeking and providing constructive feedback.
• Embody a growth mindset and cultivate curiosity about the business, emerging technologies, and human behavior to identify and capitalize on product opportunities.

What We're Looking For

Proven Leadership
• 8+ years of experience in design, with at least 5 years in management roles leading product design teams, with a track record of shipping impactful technical products.
• Proven ability to inspire and lead design teams, providing critical business context, feedback, and direction.
• Experience mentoring and developing senior and staff designers, contributing to the design community, and fostering accountability and trust.
• Experience managing hybrid, remote, and diverse teams.

Visionary and Strategic Thinking
• Ability to articulate a clear product and design vision, set multi-year goals, and create roadmaps that align with business objectives and user needs.
• Experience leading product direction and strategic thinking, connecting the dots across the organization, identifying opportunities, and making decisions based on impact.
• Ability to communicate the value of design to stakeholders at all levels, building support for the team and key initiatives.
• Success in aligning priorities with the broader mission and vision of the team.

Design and Product Expertise
• Proven track record of strong design thinking and expertise in technical product design, with key contributions to innovative, complex tools for developers and data practitioners.
• Commitment to design excellence and innovation, with a deep understanding of design thinking, systems thinking, user insights and research, and user-centered design methodologies and frameworks.
• Possess high standards and an eye for great design, with the ability to rally a team to strive for more.
• Demonstrated passion for platforms, developer productivity, and developer experience.
• Experience collaborating with design systems and design technology teams.
• Familiarity with design practices at the intersection of User Experience and AI.

Collaboration and Communication Skills
• Strong ability to build relationships and drive alignment with cross-functional partners, including engineering and product management.
• Exceptional communication skills, both written and verbal, to effectively represent design work and advocate for design's value.
• Proven track record of driving alignment and adoption of successful cross-organizational initiatives and working on large-scale, complex projects across multiple teams.

Cultural Fit
• Open-minded, empathetic leader who values candor, trust, feedback, and collaboration, aligning with Netflix's company culture.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, drive clarity, and adapt to evolving problem spaces, with a willingness to fail and learn.

More About Platform Engineering @ Netflix
• MIT CODE 2024 Practitioners Panel: Design & User Experience Perspectives (video)
• Netflix's Distributed Counter Abstraction (techblog)
• Unifying the Netflix engineering experience with a federated platform console (video)
• Incremental Processing using Netflix Maestro and Apache

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Jobcode: Reference SBJ-d5q623-3-138-105-240-42 in your application.