Senior Product Design Manager

About the role

Fivetran + dbt Labs is hiring a Senior Manager to lead the Product Design team responsible for dbt Labs. This role reports to the Director of Product Design.

This is an exciting time to join! As Fivetran and dbt Labs come together, you will help shape a coherent product experience, guide the design team through change, and influence the future of AI-powered data products. You will join a strong and talented design organization whose members care deeply about their craft, the practitioners they serve, and one another.

This is a people management and product leadership role for a design leader who wants to shape technical data products at scale. You will manage and develop a team of product designers, shape the UX strategy for dbt products, and partner with Product and Engineering leaders to define how data teams build, transform, govern, and trust their data. You will lead through strategy, coaching, direction, and cross-functional partnership.

What you'll do

Lead the dbt product design team

You will manage and coach a team of product designers who work across dbt platform and CLI-based products. Designers own the full design process from problem definition and research to UX/UI and partnering with eng/PM through delivery. You will build a culture where designers feel supported, challenged, and empowered to do thoughtful, high-quality work for deeply technical users. You will set clear expectations, give actionable feedback, support career growth, and create the conditions for strong design craft.

Own UX strategy for dbt

You will define and drive UX strategy across dbt's product experience. You will identify the highest-impact experience opportunities, connect design priorities to product outcomes, and partner with Product and Engineering leadership as a strategic peer in roadmap and product direction conversations.

Provide design direction for technical data products

You will set direction for design work across complex workflows used by technical practitioners. You do not need to be an engineer, but you do need enough technical fluency to understand the domain, evaluate tradeoffs, and partner credibly with engineering leaders. You should be comfortable discussing data workflows, ELT, analytics engineering, developer tools, and infrastructure-oriented product experiences.

Shape AI and agentic product experiences

You will lead design strategy for AI-powered and agentic experiences within dbt. This requires more than adding AI features to existing workflows. You will help the team design systems that make AI assistance understandable, useful, and safe for high-stakes technical work. As dbt builds experiences where both humans and AI agents interact with the same data infrastructure, you will also think about how product surfaces need to work for both personas.

Help integrate Fivetran and dbt Labs design

You will play an important role in co-creating a unified product experience and design culture. This is a change-leadership role. You will partner with the Director of Product Design to merge systems, processes, and culture. You will help designers navigate a new organizational context, build strong cross-functional relationships, and create clarity during a period of product and company evolution.

Build an AI-native design operating model

You will operationalize AI across the design lifecycle (from research synthesis and ideation to prototyping, documentation, and design QA). You will establish shared workflows, quality standards, and review practices that help the team move faster without compromising product quality or consistency. In partnership with the Director of Product Design and Product and Engineering leadership, you will also define cross-functional standards for when AI-generated work requires design review, ensuring clear expectations for human oversight, quality, and continuous improvement.

What we're looking for

Required experience

• You have 8+ years of product design experience and at least 5 years managing product designers.
• Strong people management skills, including coaching, performance development, direct feedback, and team culture building.
• Strong cross-functional leadership with Product, Engineering, Research, Data, Marketing, and executive stakeholders.
• Deep care for craft, with a leadership style focused on direction, critique, strategy, and coaching rather than acting as the primary IC designer.
• Designing for, or leading teams that design for, technically complex products such as ELT, data infrastructure, analytics engineering, developer tools, cloud platforms, data governance, observability, or adjacent enterprise infrastructure products.
• Designing AI-powered or agentic product experiences. You understand the difference between a lightweight AI feature, a copilot, and an agentic workflow.
• Experience operationalizing AI workflows for product design teams that goes way beyond AI prototyping. You have defined how designers use AI across the design lifecycle and have established the workflows, standards, review practices, and quality thresholds needed to make AI-assisted work effective at team scale.
• Owning UX strategy for a meaningful product area. You can show how your design strategy influenced product direction, not just how your team delivered screens.
• Strong technical fluency. You can reason about complex systems, understand engineering constraints, and discuss tradeoffs with Product and Engineering partners.
• Experience designing for expert technical users such as data engineers, analytics engineers, software engineers, platform teams, or security teams.

#LI-DJ1 #LI-Hybrid

The compensation range displayed on this job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire compensation for the target position and level, and may include sales incentives or target bonuses depending on the role. Our compensation ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Our job titles may span more than one career level. Within the range, individual compensation is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, relevant education or training, business need, market demands. The compensation range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. Your recruiter can share more about the specific compensation range for your location during the hiring process.

Oakland Pay Range

$201,765-$252,206 USD

Perks and Benefits

• 100% employer-paid medical insurance*
• Generous paid time-off policy (PTO), plus paid sick time, inclusive parental leave policy, holidays, and volunteer days off
• RSU stock grants*
• Professional development and training opportunities
• Company virtual happy hours, free food, and fun team-building activities
• Monthly cell phone stipend
• Access to an innovative mental health support platform that offers personalized care and resources in areas such as: therapy, coaching, and self-guided mindfulness exercises for all covered employees and their covered dependents.

*May vary by country and worker type - please reach out to your recruiter for more information

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