Manager, Product Design

SIDEARM Sports•Dallas, TX

2d•Onsite

About The Position

We are seeking an experienced Manager of Product Design to lead our product design team. This is a people leadership and design operations role — the right candidate brings strong craft, genuine management instincts, and the process discipline to lead a team working across a complex, multi-brand product at scale. You will manage a team of designers across three interconnected areas: fan-facing web and mobile experiences, a multi-tenant design system, and CMS interfaces that power content delivery across hundreds of school brands. You will report to the Director of Product & Partner Design and partner closely with Product Management and Engineering. This is not a role for someone who wants to remain in the individual contributor layer. It is for someone who has grown beyond IC work, is energized by developing other designers, and understands that building exceptional processes is as important as building exceptional products.

Requirements

Experience in sports, media, or multi-tenant SaaS platforms
Familiarity with collegiate athletics or fan experience design
Experience scaling a design team through a period of organizational growth or restructuring
7+ years of product design experience, with at least 3 years in a design leadership or management role
Deep understanding of the end-to-end product design process — from research and discovery through delivery and iteration
Experience designing within a B2B2C or multi-tenant model, with a clear understanding of how platform configurability affects end-user experience
Proven track record building and scaling multi-brand design systems across a complex product environment
Strong working knowledge of CMS architecture and its relationship to frontend design and component-based experiences
Experience integrating AI into team design workflows — not merely as a personal productivity tool, but as a discipline that elevates the entire team
Ability to leverage data and product KPIs to inform design strategy and measure impact, grounded in evidence rather than intuition alone
Experience partnering with Product and Engineering in environments where processes are still being defined and refined
Exceptional communication skills — able to align stakeholders, facilitate effective critiques, and advocate for design with clarity and conviction

Responsibilities

Lead and Develop the Team: Manage and mentor a team of Product Designers across multiple product workstreams. Establish clear expectations, defined career development paths, and a culture of craft and accountability. Conduct regular 1:1s, design critiques, and performance conversations that meaningfully advance individual growth. Identify skill gaps and build team capability over time through strategic hiring, coaching, and organizational structure.
Build and Own Design Operations: Define end-to-end product design processes — from discovery through delivery — that scale effectively across the team. Build and maintain design workflows, documentation standards, and team tooling. Integrate AI tools into team workflows: identify opportunities, establish best practices, and build fluency across the organization. Leverage product KPIs and usage data to inform design decisions and measure team impact. Partner with the Director to evolve the design organization's ways of working as the team and product surface continue to grow.
Drive Quality Across Three Core Areas: Fan Experience — Ensure web and mobile app experiences are intuitive, performant, and tied to measurable engagement outcomes. Design System — Build, govern, and scale component libraries and patterns that flex across hundreds of school brands without compromising consistency. CMS — Ensure design decisions account for how content is structured, configured, and rendered across the platform.
Champion the end user throughout — in a B2B2C model, the fan remains the ultimate measure of quality.
Partner closely with Engineering to close the gap between design intent and shipped product.
Create Alignment Across Teams: Serve as a strategic design partner to Product Management, contributing to roadmap discussions, discovery, and prioritization. Represent the design perspective in product planning and cross-functional reviews. Bridge the gap between design vision and execution in an environment where product processes are actively maturing. Communicate design decisions clearly to stakeholders at all levels, including school partners when the work calls for it.