Design Program Manager

Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. We’re re-defining e-commerce by blending community, shopping, and entertainment into a community just for you. As a remote co-located team, we’re inspired by innovation and anchored in our values. With hubs in the US, UK, Germany, Ireland, and Poland, we’re building the future of online marketplaces –together.

From fashion, beauty, and electronics to collectibles like trading cards, comic books, and even live plants, our live auctions have something for everyone.

And we’re just getting started! As one of the fastest growing marketplaces, we’re looking for bold, forward-thinking problem solvers across all functional areas. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our news and engineering blogs and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business, and bring people together through commerce.

Whatnot’s Design Studio is a high-impact, cross-functional creative engine that shapes the future of Whatnot. We tackle bold, high-craft initiatives that push the boundaries of design and technology. We own and elevate the Whatnot Design System (WDS), create world-class visual and motion systems, and partner deeply with product and engineering to empower teams to build faster together.

We raise the bar on quality. We bring design rigor to ambiguous problems. And we deliver work that energizes the company and inspires our community.

We’re looking for a Design Program Manager who brings structure, clarity, and momentum to a team operating at the intersection of design, product, engineering, and brand. In this role, you will help orchestrate the Design Studio’s most ambitious initiatives—from large-scale feature launches to design system rollouts and other high-impact work.

You’ll be the operational heartbeat of the Design Studio: ensuring work is scoped effectively, timelines stay healthy, teams are aligned, and designers have what they need to deliver exceptional work.

This is a highly cross-functional role in a fast-paced environment. You’ll thrive here if you’re proactive, detail-obsessed, a strong communicator, and energized by making complex work run smoothly.

We’re remote-first, but this role requires being within commuting distance of one of our office hubs: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, or New York City.

What You'll Do

• Drive operational excellence across the Design Studio—creating clarity, alignment, and predictability for high-impact initiatives.

• Partner closely with Design, Product, and Engineering leadership to plan, prioritize, and sequence work across multiple parallel tracks.

• Manage planning cycles, scoping, resourcing, timelines, and cross-team dependencies.

• Operationalize and oversee the evolution of the Whatnot Design System (WDS), ensuring smooth adoption and collaboration across product teams.

• Facilitate communication flows—run standups, reviews, crits, and cross-functional syncs that keep teams aligned and unblocked.

• Build lightweight processes that scale without slowing teams down; identify inefficiencies and continuously improve how the studio operates.

• Ensure projects have clear goals, success metrics, and feedback loops; maintain documentation that keeps teams aligned and informed.

• Act as the connective tissue between disciplines—fostering strong relationships across Design, Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Leadership.

• 7+ years experience in Design Operations, Program Management, Creative Operations, or equivalent roles within high-velocity product organizations.

• A track record of working directly with product design teams and cross-functional partners, ensuring delivery of high-quality design solutions

• Proven track record managing complex, multi-stakeholder design projects in consumer technology companies

• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority and drive consensus across diverse teams

• Experience with project management methodologies and tools (Agile, Jira, Confluence)

• Experience with design systems is a strong plus.

$190,000/year to $210,000/year + benefits + equity.

The salary range may be inclusive of several levels that would be applicable to the position. Final salary will be based on a number of factors including, level, relevant prior experience, skills, and expertise. This range is only inclusive of base salary, not benefits (more details below) or equity.

• Flexible Time off Policy and Company-wide Holidays (including a spring and winter break)

• Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision

• Work From Home Support

  • Home office setup allowance

  • Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet

• Care benefits

  • Monthly allowance for wellness

  • Annual allowance towards Childcare

  • Lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses

• Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally

• Monthly allowance to dogfood the app

  • All Whatnauts are expected to develop a deep understanding of our product. We're passionate about building the best user experience, and all employees are expected to use Whatnot as both a buyer and a seller as part of their job (our dogfooding budget makes this fun and easy!).

• Parental Leave

  • 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work *company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence.

Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, parental status, disability status, or any other status protected by local law. We believe that our work is better and our company culture is improved when we encourage, support, and respect the different skills and experiences represented within our workforce.