Design Manager

Introduction

A career in IBM Software means you'll be part of a team that transforms our customer's challenges into solutions.

Seeking new possibilities and always staying curious, we are a team dedicated to creating the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions for our customers. Our renowned legacy creates endless global opportunities for our IBMers, so the door is always open for those who want to grow their career.

IBM's product and technology landscape includes Research, Software, and Infrastructure. Entering this domain positions you at the heart of IBM, where growth and innovation thrive.

Thomas J. Watson said it best: "Good design is good business." Design is an essential profession-an imperative thread-interwoven through the various functions and segments of the business. Design is a driver of improved outcomes, contributing to business value for our clients and for IBM. Our designers work to create experiences that work together, work the same, and work for our clients. IBMers have a growth mindset and work in teams to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. We showcase ownership and autonomy throughout the design process and seek understanding of strategic objectives to create beautiful and functional products. At IBM you will be joining us in serving as a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

Your role and responsibilities

You are a Design Manager passionate about guiding our creative design team and empowering them to deliver exceptional end-to-end customer experiences. As a leader, you will be responsible for a combination of people and practice leadership. You will directly manage a team of designers, UX researchers, and content professionals, collaborating with cross-functional leadership counterparts to set and deliver project objectives. You will mentor designers with various creative backgrounds and career experiences and set up the design team for success.

Responsibilities:

Design Leadership and Community Building

• Cultivate design excellence and accelerate cultural transformation and innovation by creating the conditions for the team to do their best work.
• Define and implement strategies to accomplish the design vision and mission and communicating across the organization.
• Lead with an owner's mentality to deliver ideas and design outcomes that differentiate our solutions in the market.
• Own operational outcomes managing project tasks and timely delivery of design projects using agile methodologies.
• Make data-driven decisions with a bias for understanding and action.
• Participate in design critiques to give and receive creative direction to ensure the highest quality, market-leading design outcomes.
• Understand modern design thinking and design trends (including responsiveness, accessibility, AI)

Cross-functional collaboration and alignment

• Drive alignment by collaborating with developers, marketers, product managers and other design teams to drive a shared understanding of user's needs and behaviors.
• Communicate, collaborate, and innovate - promoting positive cross-discipline product culture on a regional scale.

People leadership

• Shape the design culture by setting a high bar for performance and design excellence and addressing performance misalignment in a prompt and human-centered manner.
• Promote an environment of psychological safety for interpersonal risk-taking that allows the design team to spend more time towards high-performance goals.
• Review designs of the multi-skilled design teams, improving the work while growing the designers and supporting their career development.
• Foster a team culture of diversity and transparent collaboration.

Leaders are expected to spend time with their teams and clients and therefore are generally expected to be in the workspace a minimum of 3 days a week, subject to business needs.

Required education

High School Diploma/GED

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• 3+ years experience as a design lead/people manager
• Experience in influencing multidisciplinary teams, communicating design needs, and accurately scoping your team's work to drive action towards business goals
• A portfolio of work samples that demonstrates experience in human-centered design with a proven track record for driving outcomes and leadership skills
• Excellent listening, written, and verbal communication skills as well as storytelling and documentation skills.
• Leaders are expected to spend time with their teams and clients and therefore are generally expected to be in the workplace a minimum of three days a week, subject to business needs.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Sustained record of excellent design work and leadership, while actively contributing to developing the design profession
• Enterprise software experience
• Self-motivation, an open mind and experience working with a diverse global team

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence-from machine learning to generative AI-to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM's AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM's hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments-a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.

Client-provided location(s): San Jose, CA

Job ID: IBM-71034

Employment Type: OTHER

Posted: 2025-11-12T18:49:43