Job Description

Zendesk builds software crafted to improve the customer experience. We lead the industry with breathtakingly simple software, but we’re constantly innovating and can’t wait to outdo ourselves in the future! As a product design team we believe in a collaborative working style with a bias towards rapid prototyping, experimentation, and a strong curiosity for our customers and their needs.

As the Product Design Manager, Design Systems, you will help craft Zendesk’s Garden Design System and nurture and develop the global team! Alongside peers in product management and engineering, you will drive and enact strategy, ensure team alignment with business goals, and scope, plan, and staff design system projects. You will leverage your deep experience in crafting beautiful, usable, robust, and accessible systems to mentor, coach, and up-level the team. And you will build relationships with Garden’s customers—the entire product development org—and lead initiatives that will help foster contribution, collaboration, and adoption. 

What you’ll be doing

• Manage and grow a global team, with reports based in America and Europe

• Develop your team to propel them to the next stages of their careers

• Drive strategy and roadmap, and hold the team accountable for delivering work on time and at a high level of quality

• Ensure team processes and tools work for the Design Systems team, and the people and teams we serve and support

• Build relationships and be an advocate for design systems at the organization level

• Lead initiatives to foster design system contribution, collaboration, and adoption 

What you bring to the role

Basic qualifications

• 2–5 years people management experience

• 5+ years designing consumer or SaaS applications, including 2+ years working directly on a complex design system, with a strong portfolio

• Passionate about design systems and cross-functional collaboration

• Able and willing to flex your working hours to effectively manage a global team

• Ability to travel 3–4 times per year, sometimes internationally

Preferred qualifications

• Experience designing enterprise-ready UI at a global scale

• Experience leading a design system

• A thirst for pushing the boundaries of enterprise software design with modern web UI patterns and implementation technologies. No coding required, but an ability to converse with developers about implementation details is crucial

• Nice-to-have: experience with accessibility and localization

Where we work

Fully Flexible 

In this role, you’ll work primarily remotely with the support of a dynamic and caring team. We’ll provide you with the digital tools and experiences to be together–even when we’re apart. Being digital first doesn’t mean we’re digital only. You’ll also have the flexibility to join us at a Zendesk workspace, in one of our Zendesk offices or our flex office spaces. We will bring our people together on occasion to connect, collaborate, learn, or celebrate in person.

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The US annualized base salary range for this position is $160,000.00-$240,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

The intelligent heart of customer experience
Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love. We advocate for digital first customer experiences—and we stick with it in our workplace. Over 5,000 employees worldwide are collaborating from kitchen tables, home offices, coworking spaces, and Zendesk workspaces to make one team.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran stat