Senior Design Program Manager, Design Tooling

Netflix is one of the world's leading entertainment services, with over 300 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

Netflix Experience Design (XD) is an inclusive blend of design disciplines, focused on the company mission of entertaining the world. XD is responsible for the global Netflix experience, including how we acquire, retain and measure customer health, member streaming platforms, and developing, producing, marketing, branding and promoting Netflix experiences.

This is a remote-friendly role  with mandatory team meetings ~4 times a year in Los Gatos or Los Angeles for collaboration and team building.

About the Netflix Games XD Team

The Netflix Games XD team delivers games to 200+ million people across mobile, web, and TV. This takes work across discovery canvases for members and nonmembers, as well as the game developer lifecycle to ensure our development partners can build and launch awesome games and experiences for the Netflix platform. 

About The Role

The Netflix  XD Operations team is seeking a Senior Design Program Manager to join our XD team.  This role will be embedded within the Game Tools design team who is responsible for designing the applications, tools, and services that enable both cloud and mobile games to launch successfully on the Netflix platform. 

As part of this team, you will bring your program management and people skills to drive cross-functional design programs at scale. As a Design Program Manager, you will drive strategy to pixels by collaborating with a multidisciplinary team of designers, content designers, engineers, product managers, and UX researchers. 

What You Will Do:

• Lead and optimize the operations for the Game Tools XD team, so that they can focus on designing and delivering features for our proprietary tools effectively, and ensuring that our game development and partner teams can bring innovative games to the Netflix service.

• Own strategic artifacts and drive initiatives/programs to ensure the team is deeply connected to the broader business context. 

• Connect the dots for the team to ensure seamless collaboration with cross-functional partners, and that the team is highly aligned with business goals.

• Partner with design leadership and cross-functional teams to establish roadmaps and maintain them through understanding business priorities and cultivating strong relationships across the games and product organizations. 

• Support the design pipeline from end to end, including prioritization and planning, resource management, and program tracking.

• Establish engagement models and cross-functional collaboration channels with key design partners and stakeholders, balancing multiple priorities and business demands.

• Support team health and resource management in partnership with design leadership.

• Successfully collaborate with design leaders, designers, product managers, researchers, engineers, and game studio partners.  

• Advocate for design by ensuring the team has time and space to explore creative, user-centered solutions.

The Must-Haves

• Experience with game development, game platforms, game tools, and game development workflows

• 7+ years of applicable program management experience in a technology and creative environment

• Demonstrated delivery of large-scale design programs and projects, preferably working in collaboration with product and engineering 

• Passion for user experience and design with an understanding of the product development process

• The ability to thrive in ambiguous environments with demonstrated  examples of proactive cross-functional partnership on large-scale initiatives that required clarity, direction, and influence amidst complexity and evolving business objectives

• Experience working across complex problem spaces, with the ability to ask  the right questions to arrive at better solutions with broader business priorities in mind 

• Strong instincts around people and organizations with demonstrated ability to influence design leadership

• Relationship and trust building – candidates are expected to develop stro