Lead Program Manager, Design

The Community You Will Join: 

Design Operations enables Airbnb’s Design group to run effectively to make products that are usable, lovable, and scalable for our users. Partnering closely with Design, Product Management, Engineering, and business leaders, we drive Airbnb’s priorities through seamless day-to-day operations and strong stakeholder alignment, with an eye towards scale and efficiency. 

The Design Program Managers on this team lead the end-to-end planning, execution, and budgeting of programs to deliver success for our product, hosts, and guests. With a strong appreciation for the practice and process of design, you understand the multiple disciplines that go into a successful product. You bring creativity to the operational aspects of a design team and deal with solving the “how,” freeing up your design lead peers to focus on crafting the “what.”

You anticipate how decisions are made, persistently explore and uncover new ways of doing things, and work collaboratively with stakeholders. You have demonstrated strong performance in your prior roles; you thrive in ambiguity and demonstrate problem-solving leadership with limited oversight.

The Difference You Will Make:

As a Lead Design Program Manager (DPM), you will partner with our Design Managers and/or Directors and cross-functional leaders to drive delivery of quarterly and annual roadmap objectives and ensure that what we promise in our roadmap is what we deliver in our product. You will drive tight alignment of activities across teams through cross-functional planning, strong communication, and rigorous program management. 

In this role, you are responsible for the program management and operations of a design team focused on a critical product initiative (as part of a broader launch) as well as establishing an operating rhythm within your team. You will lead the end-to-end scoping, planning, execution, and launch of your program to deliver success for our product, hosts, and guests. You will also serve as the bridge between critical business functions, aligning stakeholders, providing visibility into the workstream's progress, elevating risks, and shepherding the team through the process of bringing our work to life. You will partner closely with the Head of Design Program Management to provide insight on program progress and raise any red flags that could affect delivery. 

A Typical Day: 

• Drive consistency and harmony in design team operating rhythm, including communication structures, project templates, leadership cadence, and resource utilization..
• Initiate and run internal initiatives that significantly improve the Design org’s operations and cross-functional ways of working.
• Optimize interaction models between Product Marketing, Engineering, Design, Creative, and Marketing, influencing cross-functionally to identify opportunity, unlock productivity, and accelerate execution.

• Drive continuous improvement leveraging lessons learned from teams to celebrate successes as well as identify ways to improve.
• Identify and predict obstacles, collisions, and risk to projects across multiple teams and seek solutions to eliminate them.
• Inspire, develop, and challenge Airbnb's Design Program Management team, modeling excellence. 
• Build a following: attract and nurture the best talent.

Your Expertise:

• BA/BS with 12+ years Consulting, Program Management, Product Management, Project Management or relevant experience.
• Demonstrated ability to work through ambiguity to detailed solutions. You can take a vague problem, crisply frame the challenge, identify a path forward, and drive an initiative over the finish-line.
• Track record of managing and shipping impactful design initiatives in a large digital product org.
• Long-term strategic thinking balanced with near-term execution skills. Distinctive problem solving skills.
• Proven ability to build strong relationships and influence business leaders.
• Demonstrable leadership skills and experience in mediation, negotiation, and conflict resolution. 
• Demonstrated track record successfully managing ambitious and operationally complex projects with cross-functional teams.
• Experience in structuring and implementing initiatives at scale with design and product teams.
• Background in establishing systems: experience developing process where little exists, and demonstrated flexibility to get things done.
• Passionate and enthusiastic about organizational excellence and attention to detail
• Thrives in ambiguity in a fast-paced, hyper-growth organization
• Nice to Haves:
  • Deep knowledge of and appreciation for the Product Design process
  • Experience with or understanding of cross-functional (Design, Product Management, Product Marketing, Engineering) product-driven organizations or digital agency

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: [email protected]. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process. 

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.