Senior Design Manager, Platform
Apollo.io
Apollo.io is the leading go-to-market solution for revenue teams, trusted by over 500,000 companies and millions of users globally, from rapidly growing startups to some of the world's largest enterprises. Apollo.io provides sales and marketing teams with easy access to verified contact data for over 270 million B2B contacts, along with tools to engage and convert these contacts in one unified platform. By helping revenue professionals find the most accurate contact information and automating the outreach process, Apollo.io turns prospects into customers. Apollo raised a series D in 2023 and is backed by top-tier investors, including Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and more, and counts the former President and COO of Hubspot, JD Sherman, among its board members. Apollo.io is growing rapidly, with 900% revenue growth since 2021, and is looking for world-class talent to keep building with us.
We are looking for a highly skilled and motivated Senior Design Manager, Platform to lead and shape the future of our product design. In this role, you will oversee the creation of innovative and functional digital products, while managing and mentoring a team of talented designers. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional partners to drive design excellence and ensure a cohesive, user-centered experience across all product offerings. The ideal candidate has deep knowledge of design systems, information architecture, UX research, and thrives in a fast-paced environment.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design Leadership & Vision:
- Provide creative direction and output to achieve the end-to-end (E2E) vision for the product, ensuring visual innovation and functionality.
- Lead the creation and evolution of design systems, ensuring consistency across products while maintaining high design quality.
- Drive brand strategy within the product, ensuring it aligns with both user needs and business goals.
- Ensure design solutions are visually engaging, intuitive, and functional, supporting the foundation of our digital product ecosystem.
- Team Management & Mentorship:
- Lead, recruit, coach, and mentor a team of world-class product designers, ensuring career progression and development for each team member.
- Drive a framework for ongoing designer growth, fostering an environment where innovation is encouraged while balancing the need for optimization and scalability.
- Create a design culture that emphasizes user-centered design (UCD) principles and promotes collaboration across departments.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- Collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, QA, sales, marketing, and other leaders to ensure a cohesive and high-quality user experience.
- Champion cross-functional collaboration, promoting the impact of design in every aspect of product development.
- Communicate effectively with stakeholders to advocate for the value of design and user-centered practices throughout the organization.
- Work with engineering teams to manage design assets and align on the technical feasibility of design solutions.
- Process & Impact:
- Establish clear metrics and measurable goals to provide visibility into the impact of design on business outcomes.
- Develop and implement a framework that ensures design solutions are delivered effectively and with excellence across all departments.
- Advocate for continuous improvement opportunities within design and across cross-functional teams to drive efficiency and improve communication practices.
- Manage multiple design projects with high velocity, ensuring a high-quality output in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
- Strategic Influence & Innovation:
- Collaborate with product teams to align on long-term product strategies, ensuring design supports both user needs and business objectives.
- Lead efforts to introduce new design methodologies, processes, and tools that enhance the team’s output and the overall product experience.
- Stay up-to-date on the latest design trends, tools, and front-end technologies, ensuring the team remains on the cutting edge of design innovation.
Qualifications:
- 5+ years of experience as a Design Manager or Director, with a proven track record of leading design teams in a fast-paced environment.
- Deep knowledge of design systems, information architecture, Material Design, iOS design languages, and user-centered design methods.
- Strong portfolio showcasing successful product design and evolution, with an emphasis on design systems and end-to-end product design.
- 4-6+ years of experience shipping products and collaborating closely with developers.
- Excellent collaboration skills, with a proven ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams (engineering, product, marketing, etc.).
- Experience driving brand strategy within digital products, ensuring alignment between user needs, design, and business goals.
- Strong organizational skills, with the ability to juggle multiple projects and deliver at high velocity.
- Familiarity with front-end technologies and design collaboration tools (e.g., Figma, Sketch, Zeplin, or similar).
- A passion for mentoring and growing design talent, creating a positive and inspiring team environment.
What You’ll Love About Apollo
Besides the great compensation package and culture that thrives in openness and excellence, we invest tremendous effort into developing our remote employees’ careers. The team embraces that we have a sole purpose: to help customers maximize their full revenue potential on the Apollo platform. This mindset opens us up to a lot of creative approaches to making customers successful at scale. You’ll be a significant part of a lean, remote team, empowered to really own your role as a proactive educator. We’re very collaborative at Apollo, so you’ll be able to lean on your teammates, even in adjacent departments, to help you achieve lofty goals. You’ll be supported and encouraged to experiment and take educated risks that lead to big wins. And, you’ll have a whole team remotely by your side to help you do it!