Senior Manager, UX Design - Partners

Why PlayStation?

PlayStation isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. Today, we’re recognized as a global leader in entertainment producing The PlayStation family of products and services including PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®VR, PlayStation®Plus, acclaimed PlayStation software titles from PlayStation Studios, and more.

PlayStation also strives to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity. We welcome and encourage everyone who has a passion and curiosity for innovation, technology, and play to explore our open positions and join our growing global team.

The PlayStation brand falls under Sony Interactive Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation.

Department overview:

Partners is one of three pillars within the PlayStation design organization. We design and build enterprise tools for our PlayStation Partners – all the gaming studios who create games, to build and publish games for PlayStation. Partner Platform - our ecosystem of tools, is vast and covers everything from registration and account management, to development support, to publishing and QA, to analytics and post-launch support. 

Role overview:

Define the future of gaming and digital content distribution for game studios on the PlayStation Partner platform.

We are seeking an experienced Senior UX Manager to join our dynamic team. You will be responsible for leading and running multiple groups within our user experience team while also contributing to the strategic development and implementation of UX and Design Thinking practices. This role requires a strong blend of leadership, project management, and design operations skills, as well as a deep understanding of user-centred design principles.

As part of the larger SONY design community, you will be part of a global design group that respects and celebrates the value of design, design thinking and design process. Collaborate with designers both locally and globally to elevate the standard of design across the organization.

An ideal candidate possesses passion, dedication, and skills vital to deliver best-in-class products and experiences. If this sounds like you, then we would love to hear from you.

What you’ll be doing:

As Senior Manager of UX Design for Partners at Playstation, you play a key role in shaping the world’s largest game and content distribution platform. Located in California working on a global, distributed team, you will partner with a cross-functional team of designers, product managers, researchers, writers, engineers, and business partners to support the team to ideate and craft experiences that both delight our users and define the next generation of media experiences.

Duties and responsibilities include:

Team leadership

• Lead and mentor multiple teams of UX designers, fostering a collaborative, experimental and inclusive work environment
• Set clear goals, provide constructive feedback, and evaluate performance to ensure the team’s success
• Support growth of the design team through continuous feedback and mentorship, and recruitment initiatives
• Promote continuous learning and growth within the team by organizing workshops, knowledge-sharing sessions, and skill-building initiatives
• Provide accountability for the UX design quality across the Partner experiences
• Engage in planning and prioritization discussions to ensure appropriate resourcing

Design operations

• Help develop and implement user-centric and design-thinking strategies and processes to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of the team, within the wider cross-functional team
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product managers, program managers, producers, engineers, and stakeholders, to streamline design workflows and improve collaboration and communication, and reduce dependencies

User experience strategy

• Work closely with designers, product managers and stakeholders to help define UX strategy, goals, and critical metrics aligned with business objectives
• Drive the development of service blueprints, flow maps and other UX artefacts among the team to guide product development and ensure user-centred design approaches 

Design leadership and advocacy

• Advocate for user-centric design principles and best practices within the organization, fostering a culture of design thinking
• Drive alignment between design efforts and business goals, and ensure design is a strategic differentiator for the company
• Stay up to date with industry trends and new technologies to drive innovation and maintain