Sr. Design Manager

The Platform team creates the technology that enables Spotify to learn quickly and scale easily, enabling rapid growth in our users and our business around the globe. Spanning many disciplines, we work to make the business work; creating the frameworks, capabilities and tools needed to welcome a billion customers. Join us and help to amplify productivity, quality and innovation across Spotify.

User Platform (UP) is a tribe in Spotify’s Platform mission. Platform mission is responsible for building the tooling and support platforms for the engineering teams at Spotify. UP is responsible for the platforms for authentication, authorization, user account data, and user experience configuration at Spotify. UP was formed with the mission to improve its technologies and move up the stack to provide a secure platform with reusable components that can be used on many different surfaces to help users log in and lead their account data. UP is also working with teams around Spotify to help them experiment and customize the user experience in new and more refined ways.

What you'll do:

• Lead and craft the future of our User Platform offerings along with your counterparts in Product, Tech, and Product Insights, to include design work on the existing product roadmap.
• Lead, run, and grow a diverse and inclusive team of product designers and User Researchers (4 direct reports to start), setting focus, strategy, and priorities to help individuals grow in their careers and improve influence and impact.
• Lead strategic design work, discover and generate new product ideas or opportunities, and validate their feasibility and business viability.
• Collaborate with other design leads across Spotify to ensure consistency of the “User Account” user experience.
• Enable collaboration and cross-functional alignment.
• Establish a set of customer-centric standard methodologies for our design team to assist them to make informed decisions.
• Drive high-level platform initiatives forward from a design perspective, teaming up closely with leads across our team and the wider Spotify organization.
• Ensure designers are working in service of product and business goals and user outcomes.
• Help design team identify and plan tactical design, this includes activities such as UX research, design sprints, prototyping, and usability testing.
• Develop your team in design discovery and experimentation to uncover the biggest and best opportunities for us to research, prototype, and test.
• Set the complete design vision and actively guide your team through all phases of design and development, from conceptualization to engineering execution and post-launch success tracking and iteration.

Who you are:

• Extensive experience leading product design teams with a variety of crafts at consumer-focused organizations and B2B tools.
• A trusted and recognized leader, consistently demonstrating credibility in cross-functional interactions.
• You are a leader with practical design chops. You’ve shipped many products over the years, and understand what it takes to build exciting, consumer-oriented experiences.
• An excellent communicator. You have the communication skills to help you work cross-functionally with business partners.
• You shine most at encouraging others to carry forward and complete a strategy without needing to be in the room.
• You have a user and data-focused design mentality and never compromise quality. You are constantly looking to hone your team’s instincts through user feedback and data insights and know-how to make them concrete.
• You understand the role and importance of qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
• You are eager to learn and evolve in all things. From leadership skills to design craft to process to industry and market trends -- you never stop pushing into the next big challenge.

Where you'll be:

• We are a distributed workforce enabling our band members to find a work mode that is best for them!
• Where in the world? For this role, it can be within the EMEA region in which we have a work location and is within working hours. 
• Working hours? We operate within the Central European and GMT time zones for collaboration and ask that all be located in that time zone. 
• Prefer an office to work from home instead? Not a problem! We have plenty of options for your working preferences.

Our global benefits:

• Extensive learning opportunities, through our dedicated team, GreenHouse.
• Flexible share incentives letting you choose how you share in our success.
• Global parental leave, six months off - fully paid - for all new parents.
• All The Feels, our employee assistance program and self-care hub.
• Flexible public holidays, swap days off according to your values and beliefs.
• Spotify On Tour, join your colleagues on trips to industry festivals and events.

Learn about life at Spotify:

Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.

Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service.

Global COVID and Vaccination Disclosure:

Spotify is committed to safety and well-being of our employees, vendors and clients. We are following regional guidelines mandating vaccination and testing requirements, including those requiring vaccinations and testing for in-person roles and event attendance. For the US, we have mandated that all employees and contractors be fully vaccinated in order to work in our offices and externally with any third-parties. For all other locations, we strongly encourage our employees to get vaccinated and also follow local COVID and safety protocols.