Opportunity OverviewThe Design Quality and Excellence Senior Manager is a matrixed leader responsible for the operational backbone of Enterprise Design. This role governs design systems and tools, operational processes and measurement, workforce strategy, culture, and digital accessibility, while orchestrating the AI transformation of the design function. As the most senior Design Operations leader and a strategic partner to the Sr. Director, Enterprise Design, this leader advances design as a firmwide capability and defines how human and agentic design work together. The leader directs a growing team of specialists and contractors, ensuring quality, consistency, and velocity across all design portfolios.
What You'll Do:- Orchestrate the AI transformation of Enterprise Design, facilitating senior leadership vision and strategy sessions to integrate AI tools, reimagine workflows for an agentic future, and define how human and agentic design collaborate across the function, while advancing prototyping and experimentation capabilities that accelerate concepts from idea to first interaction.
- Govern and advance the design system, tooling ecosystem, and Experience Design quality standards within an emerging AI product development lifecycle (PDLC), ensuring scalable human and AI-assisted workflows and establishing Ready-to-Build and Ready-to-Launch standards and gates in partnership with Design, Business, and Product teams.
- Advance the firm's design capability maturity through a formal maturity model, evolving both human and agentic design practices and measuring progress against defined benchmarks.
- Lead staffing, workforce planning, and vendor contract management across full-time, contract, and third-party agency resources, optimizing the talent mix to deliver portfolio outcomes, control costs, and build a resilient talent pipeline.
- Centralize and govern digital accessibility, setting standards, governing compliance across digital experiences, and leading the transition and ongoing management of accessibility specialists within the function.
- Serve as the most senior Design Operations leader and strategic partner to the Sr. Director, Enterprise Design, driving operational planning, portfolio prioritization, resource allocation, and cross-functional alignment across all design portfolios.
- Shape and grow the culture of design within and beyond Enterprise Design, fostering communities of practice, design excellence rituals, and knowledge sharing that elevate the discipline firmwide.
- Define and track operational metrics for the design function, including adoption rates, quality scores, speed-to-value, and maturity indices, using data to drive continuous improvement and investment decisions.
Position RequirementsWhat You'll Need:- Bachelor's degree in Design, Science, Engineering, or a related discipline such as Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors, Instructional Design, Computer Science, Digital or Interactive Media, Communications, Behavioral Science, Psychology, or Anthropology. Advanced degrees or professional certifications in operations management, AI, or design leadership are preferred.
- 5+ years of relevant experience in design, design operations, or design thinking, including 4+ years of leadership experience directly managing designers or operations teams.
- Demonstrated ability to develop and lead enterprise-scale design or operations programs from strategy through execution, coordinating across design disciplines and functions, driving cross-functional initiatives, and producing executive-ready updates.
- Demonstrated ability to lead and inspire multiple teams while developing team leaders and senior individual contributors.
- Experience in operations strategy, including business and process modeling, operations transformation, and resource planning within large organizations.
- Experience governing design systems and managing design tooling ecosystems at scale, including Figma, Jira, user research and testing platforms, quality measurement frameworks, and emerging AI design tools.
- Demonstrated experience leading digital accessibility programs, including setting and governing accessibility standards and managing accessibility specialists.
- Excellent executive-level communication and collaboration skills, with a demonstrated ability to influence senior and executive stakeholders across functions without direct authority and drive outcomes within matrixed organizations.
- Demonstrated ability to define operational metrics, build dashboards, and use data to drive continuous improvement and investment decisions using tools such as Clarity, Jira, Power BI, and Tableau.
- Demonstrated experience with AI-enabled design workflows, including AI-assisted and agentic approaches to learning, prototyping, and design quality, as well as governing or advancing design systems within AI-first or agentic design and PDLC environments.
Candidates that live within a commutable distance from our Tempe, AZ, St. Louis, MO home office locations, and/or that work within a Talent Capability and Generations Hub are expected to work in the office four days per week.Salary InformationEdward Jones' compensation and benefits package includes medical and prescription drug, dental, vision, voluntary benefits (such as accident, hospital indemnity, and critical illness), short- and long-term disability, basic life, and basic AD&D coverage. Short- and long-term disability, basic life, and basic AD&D coverage are provided at no cost to associates. Edward Jones offers a 401k retirement plan, and tax-advantaged accounts: health savings account, and flexible spending account. Edward Jones observes ten paid holidays and provides 15 days of vacation for new associates beginning on January 1 of each year, as well as sick time, personal days, and a paid day for volunteerism. Associates may be eligible for bonuses and profit sharing. All associates are eligible for the firm's Employee Assistance Program. For more information on the Benefits available to Edward Jones associates, please visit our benefits page.
