Senior Associate - Design Operations
About The Position
The Amex Digital Labs team originates, incubates, and manages products and platforms for customers’ digital lives. It uses emerging technologies to develop digital payment and financial services products and Membership experiences, often in collaboration with technology companies and strategic partners. As a Design Operations Analyst within Digital Labs, you will support the day-to-day workflows, tools, and processes of the growing UX and Design Strategy team. Working with Design Leadership, Project Managers, cross-product Operations and Strategy, Global Supply Management, and Product and Engineering partners, you will coordinate design resources, manage vendor and agency relationships, track project activity, and improve team operations. The role includes maintaining the team’s budget, operating resources, tools, workspaces, design request backlog, and view of active and upcoming work. You will help plan capacity and resourcing, establish consistent project practices, enable the design team through onboarding and operating standards, coordinate accessibility processes and resources, and support agency and procurement operations.
Requirements
- 2–4 years of experience in design operations, project management, or creative agency coordination.
- Strong organizational skills and demonstrated ability to manage budgets, vendors, and cross-functional workflows.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office tools, particularly Excel and PowerPoint.
- Familiarity with Airtable, Jira, Confluence, or similar project management and collaboration tools.
- Must be eligible to work in the United States; American Express will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.
Responsibilities
- Maintain the Design Team’s A&P budget and track spending throughout the year.
- Maintain and evolve team operating resources, including ways-of-working documentation and shared knowledge repositories.
- Manage the structure, organization, and accessibility of Design team tools and workspaces, including Confluence, OneDrive, and project tracking systems.
- Maintain incoming design requests and the Airtable backlog, manage resourcing, and balance team bandwidth and workload.
- Partner with Design Leadership and cross-functional stakeholders to translate demand into capacity and resourcing plans.
- Maintain a consolidated view of active and upcoming design work, including priorities, owners, milestones, dependencies, risks, and resource commitments.
- Establish consistent project kickoff, status reporting, documentation, scorecards, measures of success, and handoff practices.
- Maintain and improve design team operating standards, templates, and collaborative ways of working.
- Coordinate onboarding and access to essential tools, resources, and working agreements for cross-functional partners.
- Support team rituals, planning sessions, retrospectives, and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Promote consistent practices while preserving flexibility for UX, research, and design strategy work.
- Coordinate accessibility-related processes and resources within the Labs Design team, working with Labs Design, Legal, and Enterprise Design partners to maintain standards, documentation, and team resources.
- Coordinate day-to-day work with external design agency partners, including deliverables, timelines, statements of work, compliance monitoring, yearly due diligence, invoices, and related documentation.
- Assist with statement-of-work processing and coordination with Sourcing & Procurement.
- Support onboarding of new agencies.
- Conduct ongoing agency assessments by gathering feedback, reviewing partnership health, and ensuring the agency roster meets evolving team needs.
Benefits
- Competitive base salaries
- Bonus incentives
- 6% company match on retirement savings plan
- Free financial coaching and financial well-being support
- Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability benefits
- Flexible working model with hybrid, onsite, or virtual arrangements depending on role and business need
- 20+ weeks of paid parental leave for all parents, regardless of gender, for pregnancy, adoption, or surrogacy
- Free access to global onsite wellness centers staffed with nurses and doctors, depending on location
- Free and confidential counseling support through the Healthy Minds program
- Career development and training opportunities
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
