Design Program Manager

Cisco Meraki is the industry leader in simple, secure, intelligent networking and IoT platforms. We empower organizations everywhere – from local libraries to global hotels – to focus on their mission and have technology that simply works.

We’re looking for a Design Program Manager to support our Design System team and our Product teams through the adoption process. This will be a key role in enabling the adoption of the Design System throughout Cisco’s portfolio of products. The Design System is at the core of Cisco’s strategic initiative to drive consistency and continuity across its products and platforms and this role is key to achieving this goal.

Meraki believes the quality of our products is dependent on the quality of our teams. We place a high value on cultivating the growth and development of our people. We value collaboration. We give and get feedback early and often, share what we know, and learn from each other.

What you'll do

In this role, you’ll help make our Design System team more effective by applying process improvements, facilitating UX and cross-functional teamwork, assisting with cross-product component request prioritization, and driving design work forward from strategy to implementation.

The Design Program Manager role is critical to creating a faster, more consistent design experience. You will have the unique opportunity to drive adoption and implementation of our design system, ensuring that it’s simple, streamlined, and efficient.

You’ll collaborate with, communicate with, and support various external product teams, to deliver the highest level of trust-building and strategic counsel help, ensuring quality and efficiency across their portfolio.

• Partner with design and research leads to provide input with regard to scope, resourcing and sequencing of work for small to large projects.
• Coordinate and facilitate UX activities throughout project lifecycle for a variety of initiatives
• Maintain high-level familiarity with the design system and work across product teams to evangelize the design system’s value and engagement model.
• Provide operational strategy for sophisticated problems associated with a growing organization and limited design resources.
• Identify team needs with regards to process, tools, documentation, and asset management; drive required changes to make sure designers are working at optimum efficiency
• Proactively assess risk, raise flags, and seek to resolve issues that come up over course of a project
• Act as liaison across Cisco Networking platforms, ensuring alignment and making sure that interdependencies are understood and planned for
• Supervise and continuously communicate project status with team, collaborators and senior management.
• Schedule and facilitate kickoffs, internal and cross-functional design reviews, standups, retrospectives and handoffs with engineering
• Provide design enablement guidance as a strategic partner to help teams in design system adoption
• Lead or collaborate with UX team leadership in key project decision-making, including: requirements gathering, scheduling, resource allocation, and coordination of teams and approval processes
• Handle project details such as meeting agendas, key decisions, action items, meeting notes and other relevant project files or reference material
• Uphold UX standards and best practices and help identify areas for improvement

You are an ideal candidate if you:

• Are a collaborative problem solver who is motivated by a good challenge.
• Are empathetic and self-aware, with a history of building successful working relationships.
• Are comfortable helping teams through business challenges and constraints.
• Are a creative problem-solver with strong project-management skills and a deep understanding and appreciation of the design process.
• Are able to assess the needs of a project and bring the appropriate transparency and structure to ambiguity.
• Collaborate easily with Designers, Researchers, Writers, Engineers, and Product Managers and are able to facilitate decisions and resolve issues respectfully.

Minimum Requirements for this role:

• 7+ years as a UX/Design Producer, UX/Design Program Manager, Project Manager, or validated experience in a product focused organization, design consultancy or creative agency
• Experience leading UX projects with various project management methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, etc.), with a passion to drive towards more agile practices
• Familiarity with WCAG standards and how best to implement them in front-end and design practices
• Experience managing workflows, project plans and driving execution
• Experience supporting teams developing user stories and acceptance criteria
• Knowledge of design process, design thinking, and user-centered design approaches
• Excellent written and verbal communication and strong meeting facilitation skills
• Ability to convey business needs through design objectives to key stakeholders
• Experience advocating for UX within groups of cross-functional collaborators
• Motivated by the potential of a growing and evolving design organization and design ops team
• Have the ability to adapt and thrive in a constantly evolving organization, showing eagerness to take on new challenges as they arise
• Care deeply about the people you work with

Does this sound like you? We’d love to hear from you!

Meraki is based in the Mission Bay area of San Francisco, less than a 5-minute walk from the Chase Center and with beautiful views of the Oracle Ballpark and the Bay beyond. You will have access to an onsite gym, multiple kitchens stocked with high-quality snacks, a coffee bar, catered lunches every single day, and a generous benefits package.

At Cisco Meraki, we’re challenging the status quo with the power of diversity, inclusion, and collaboration. When we connect different perspectives, we can imagine new possibilities, inspire innovation, and release the full potential of our people. We’re building an employee experience that includes appreciation, belonging, growth, and purpose for everyone.

Cisco is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis. Cisco will consider for employment, on a case by case basis, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.