Design Manager

Design Management at Think: The Design Manager is entrusted with the care and support of a team of talented designers aligning with their own area of expertise (8-10 people). We’re looking for someone who is comfortable coaching and mentoring people to help them grow as both designers and consultants. The ideal candidate has experience cultivating a team by hiring the right people, creating community and belonging, advocating for needs, providing project support, enabling personal growth, and spotlighting purpose and impact. In doing so, the ideal candidate enables our teams to deliver high quality work that aligns with our vision & strategy and meets our clients' needs. We’re looking for someone who’s able to continuously improve our standards, practices, and delivery outcomes, and who understands the process and partnership needed to consult in the service and product space.

Key Responsibilities

• Live our Core Values and encourage others to do the same
• Provide consistent, valuable feedback to direct reports, maintaining high performance and morale; ensure direct reports keep current with trends and advancements in the industry
• Exhibit a level of expertise within own discipline domain to provide meaningful guidance and mentorship on deliverables and interactions with clients and peers
• Conduct regular performance management duties; performance reviews, career pathing, goal setting, performance improvement issue escalation
• Serve as senior-level advisor to project teams on billable client projects
• Participate in departmental recruiting, hiring, and onboarding activities
• Work with Design leadership and project team leaders to ensure projects are appropriately staffed to leverage our team's bandwidth and skillset
• Collaborate with department VPs and other leadership team members to find ways of maintaining and improving departmental performance and delivery
• Lead or participate in department strategic initiatives, organizational internal initiatives, sales activities, etc — collaborating closely with design management team to push internal efforts forward to completion

Required Skills and Qualifications

• Prior experience as a design team leader with hands-on experience leading projects
• Prior people management experience leading a team of direct reports
• Prior experience mentoring, building skills and identifying desired career paths
• Patient and empathetic in dealing with people; possess excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Able to build positive working relationships with direct reports, as well as others throughout the organization; comfortable working with cross-disciplinary teams and with organizations of various sizes
• Displays good judgment and efficient decision-making; knows when to call out and/or escalate concerns and risks, and accompanies those with potential solutions
• Understands the modern design landscape; able to actively participate in design activities as needed, as well as able to assist direct reports with problem-solving and approach