Product Design Manager

College Board•New York, NY

10d•$113,000 - $170,000•Remote

About The Position

As the Product Design Manager, you will lead and inspire a team of service and product designers at various levels (Product Designer, Senior Product Designer, and Lead Product Designer). You will be accountable for design leadership across the Scoring & Reporting domain, shaping how complex operational systems, human workflows, and emerging AI capabilities come together to deliver accurate, equitable, and trustworthy outcomes at scale. You will establish and foster a collaborative and innovative design culture with our existing and new teams. Your role will involve strategic thinking, team leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and hands-on design review.

Requirements

Experience: 10+ years of experience in product design, with 3+ years in a leadership or management role.
A strategic and inclusive leadership style: you set clear priorities, build effective team structures, plan for future needs, and foster a culture of belonging.
A proven ability to drive performance and growth: you set high expectations, deliver real-time, evidence-based feedback, and coach team members to take smart risks, stretch their skills, and achieve meaningful impact.
Skills: Mastery of user-centered design, systems thinking, design strategy, and problem framing.
Research: Strong skills in research planning, synthesis, and facilitation, with the ability to turn insights into strategic direction.
Design: Excellent visual and interaction design skills, with fluency in tools like Figma, Miro, and Dovetail.
Collaboration: Ability to navigate technical conversations and collaborate effectively with engineers and other stakeholders.
Clear and Concise Communication: Excellent storytelling and communication skills, with the ability to influence across disciplines and levels. Both verbal and written.
Passion: A commitment to inclusive, ethical, and accessible design, and a passion for educational equity.
Growth Mindset: Self-motivated, curious, and always looking to improve your craft and impact.
The ability to travel 4-6 times a year to College Board offices or on behalf of College Board business
A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work
Authorization to work in the United States for any employer
Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and a comfort learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively.
A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input.
A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking.
A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success.

Responsibilities

Team Leadership and Management (40%)
Leadership: Provide direction, mentorship, and support to the product design team, fostering growth and development. Set vision and priorities for the team, track and mange progress to goals, and provide coaching and support to ensure team members meet and exceed goals, remain engaged, and contribute meaningfully to our mission
Cultivate an inclusive and high achieving culture that enables all team members to live out College Board’s Operating Principles. Bring proven leadership experience and consistently embody College Board’s Manager Expectations in your work.
Team Building: Participate in hiring and onboarding activities to grow a diverse and collaborative design team.
Performance Management: Conduct regular performance reviews, set goals, and provide feedback to team members.
Design Culture: Champion design excellence and contribute to the evolution of design standards and practices. Establish norms of embedded and iterative design work within teams, favoring cross-functional engagement over delivering artifacts.
Design Strategy and Execution (30%)
Strategic Planning: Lead the development and execution of design strategies that align with business goals and user needs.
Systems Thinking: Lead design for complex socio-technical systems where human judgment, automation, policy constraints, and auditability intersect–and where design decisions can carry real-world consequences.
Research Leadership: Oversee generative, formative, and evaluative research efforts to shape product vision and direction.
Design Quality: Elevate the quality of design across teams and products, ensuring adherence to accessibility standards and inclusive design practices.
Artifact Governance: Ensure that design and research artifacts (such as personas, journey maps, wireframes, prototypes) are created and stored in a consistent and discoverable manner and reflect high quality standards that you help steward.
Cross-Functional Collaboration (20%)
Lead: Serve as the design leader and strategic counterpart to product and engineering leadership, jointly owning platform direction, roadmap tradeoffs, and system-level experience decisions. Exercise independent judgment and constructive dissent when design, user impact, or operational risk is at stake.
Influence: Influence roadmap decisions by connecting user needs with business goals and organizational mission.
Communication: Present research, concepts, and design work clearly and persuasively to peers and stakeholders.
Collaborate: Partner with product, data science, psychometrics, and engineering to define human + AI interaction models that are transparent, defensible, and aligned with College Board’s standards for fairness and trust.
Growth and Development (10%)
Thought Leadership: Contribute to the evolution of design standards, practices, and design system components.
Continuous Learning: Stay current with tools, trends, and design practices, and share knowledge with the team.
Community Engagement: Support design culture through critiques, lunch & learns, and internal community-building.