Sr. Product Design Manager, Platform

Rippling People Center Inc. • San Francisco, CA

58d • Hybrid

About The Position

At Rippling, Design is at the core of our mission to free smart people to tackle hard problems. We help teams automate the mundane, surface insights instantly, and operate with clarity and confidence. In a world of outdated, bloated legacy products, we're building something modern, streamlined, and deeply considered. A thoughtful user experience is how we turn complexity into simplicity so our customers can stay focused on what matters. As a Senior Manager on Platform, you'll lead a team of designers focused on Rippling's core experience which may include portions of our shared surfaces like our navigation and home in addition to our data offerings and how customers gain insight into their business. You'll also be hands‑on shaping system‑wide AI experiences and platform primitives that other product teams build on. This role offers a unique opportunity to lead a business‑critical team, design innovative foundational experiences from the ground up, and reimagine key workflows at platform scale for massive customer impact. The Platform is differentiated in Rippling-it drives the portfolio's overall success and each feature improvement or new product has outsized impact on Rippling's growth and, more importantly, our customers' success. If you're a seasoned leader who thrives in high‑velocity environments, handles complexity with confidence, and picks up new domains quickly-we'd love to hear from you.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional design experience, with 3+ years leading and managing design teams.
• Proven track record of delivering high‑impact, customer‑focused projects.
• Must be familiar with complexity: demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity and interdependent systems, turning complexity into simple, learnable patterns.
• Proven ability to drive high‑quality decisions through organizations, establishing mechanisms (principles, reviews, quality bars) that align cross‑functional stakeholders.
• Exemplary craft with specific, concrete portfolio examples (interaction, visual, information architecture, or UX writing) and clear before/after impact.
• Systems thinker with hands‑on experience designing integrated product suites or feature ecosystems; experience building and governing design systems at scale is a plus.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to persuade and influence stakeholders.
• Collaborative approach to working with Engineering, Product, and Marketing to drive both product strategy and rigorous, operational execution.
• Experience leading, recruiting, and scaling design teams in both startups and established companies, including systematically growing designers' skills to do the best work of their careers.

Responsibilities

• Lead a business‑critical platform team driving foundational improvements across Rippling's core experience-design systems, shared surfaces, and system‑wide AI experiences-fueling company growth and differentiation.
• Guide a team of designers shaping platform primitives and cross‑product experiences, including component libraries, tokens, theming, navigation, search, approvals, notifications, and accessibility.
• Design large‑scale, complex experiences that are learnable, powerful, trustworthy, and efficient for users across the globe.
• Create a culture of craft, quality, and execution by inspiring, motivating, and leading product designers across experience levels to do the best work of their careers.
• Define and steward quality bars and decision frameworks (principles, reviews, quality gates) that drive high‑quality decisions across the organization.
• Establish contribution and governance models for the design system with Engineering to ensure adoption, performance, and accessibility at scale.
• Prototype and ship system‑wide AI experiences (assistive workflows, smart defaults, summarization) in partnership with AI/ML and core product teams.
• Partner closely with Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, and executive leadership to deliver best‑in‑class, innovative work that pushes the limits of what's possible.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Industry: Publishing Industries
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees