Senior Associate - Design Operations

American Express•New York, NY

12d

About The Position

The Amex Digital Labs team drives innovation at American Express by originating, incubating, and managing products and platforms that support customers’ digital lives. The team develops 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 manage the day-to-day workflows, tools, and processes supporting the UX and Design Strategy team. You will work with Design Leadership, Project Managers, cross-product Operations and Strategy, Global Supply Management, and Product and Engineering partners to coordinate design resources, manage vendor and agency relationships, track project activity, and improve team 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.
Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the United States; the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with Airtable, Jira, Confluence, or similar project management and collaboration tools.

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 backlog in Airtable, 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, partnering with Labs Design, Legal, and Enterprise Design to maintain standards, documentation, and team resources.
Coordinate day-to-day work with external design agency partners, including tracking 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.
Assess agencies on an ongoing basis by gathering feedback, reviewing partnership health, and ensuring the agency roster meets evolving team needs.