The opportunity
Instacart is on a mission to make eating well effortless for everyone and great design is a key ingredient. As a Senior Design Program Manager, you'll drive operational excellence and programmatic execution across the Design organization—building AI-enabled systems, scaling…
What you'll do
Programmatic Execution: Drive end-to-end delivery of complex, multi-quarter design initiatives across Design, Product, Engineering, Marketing, Legal, Business Development and other cross-functional teams. Enable seamless cross-functional collaboration and predictable program outcomes.
AI Enablement: Build and deploy AI-enabled workflows that automate program management tasks—status reporting, resource tracking, documentation synthesis, and stakeholder communication. Champion AI fluency in Design to accelerate design-first thinking and increase operational efficiency.
Operations & Vendor Management: Own strategic vendor relationships and contract management for design tooling (Figma, prototyping, asset management, collaboration platforms). Negotiate contracts, optimize licensing spend, and ensure infrastructure scales with growth. Manage contractor/agency relationships and partner with Finance, Legal, and IT on compliance and cost efficiency.
Systems & Tooling: Champion team health through capacity planning, roadmapping, and resource allocation. Build operational metrics and tooling integrations that create seamless workflows across platforms.
Design Systems & Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner with the Instacart Design System (IDS) team to align programs with system evolution and component adoption. Drive governance programs that scale IDS across product teams. Act as strategic partner to Product, Engineering, Marketing, Legal, and Operations. Translate design strategy into executable programs with clear visibility into progress and outcomes. Facilitate planning cycles and milestone reviews where design intersects with product roadmaps.
Design Craft Integration: Apply design thinking and product sense to program design—understanding user needs, designing operational experiences, and iterating based on feedback. Build systems that empower designers and product managers to do their best work while balancing flexibility with consistency, creative exploration with scalable patterns, and craft excellence with business impact.
What they're looking for
- + years in program management and design operations within design or product: organizations, with deep experience driving operational excellence and culture for design and product teams.
- Strong product sense and design craft sensibility, with well-developed: methods and tools for driving fluid programs forward into the market.
- Experience with all stages of the product development lifecycle, launching products end-to-end.
- (component libraries, tokens, documentation, cross-platform patterns)
