Description
At Instacart, we're transforming the grocery industry by making it easier for people to access the food they love and spend more time with their loved ones.
As a Senior Design Program Manager II, you will drive operational excellence and programmatic execution across the Design organization, building AI-enabled systems, scaling critical processes, and managing the tools and vendor relationships that power our creative work.
Responsibilities
- 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.
- AI Enablement: Build and deploy AI-enabled workflows that automate program management tasks, such as status reporting, resource tracking, documentation synthesis, and stakeholder communication.
- Operations & Vendor Management: Own strategic vendor relationships and contract management for design tooling, negotiate contracts, optimize licensing spend, and ensure infrastructure scales with growth.
- Systems & Tooling: Champion team health through capacity planning, roadmapping, and resource allocation, and 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, and drive governance programs that scale IDS across product teams.
- Design Craft Integration: Apply design thinking and product sense to program design, understanding user needs, designing operational experiences, and iterating based on feedback.
Requirements
- 6+ years in program management and design operations within design or product organizations
- Strong product sense and design craft sensibility
- Experience with all stages of the product development lifecycle
- Technical fluency to collaborate with design system and engineering teams
- Proven track record driving complex, cross-functional programs from 0→1 and scaling operational systems in fast-paced environments
- AI fluency and experience leveraging AI tools
- Vendor/contract management experience
- Deep knowledge of design and program management tooling ecosystems
Preferred Qualifications
- Design systems expertise
- Experience building AI-powered workflows for creative operations or design tooling integrations
- Success translating leadership vision into actionable roadmaps and operating models
- Experience in hybrid/embedded team models with deep cross-functional partnership
- Comfort balancing hands-on execution with strategic oversight
- Track record using data and storytelling to influence leadership and secure buy-in for operational investments