Senior Design Operations Manager

Life insurance is one of the world's most important products. It's also one of the hardest to build, distribute, and modernize. Bestow exists to change that.

Bestow is a leading vertical technology platform serving some of the largest and most innovative life insurers. Our platform unifies the fragmented, legacy value chain, enabling carriers to launch products in weeks instead of years. Carriers choose us to scale and operate at unprecedented speed, powered by AI and automation.

Bestow isn't selling policies. We're building the infrastructure that helps an entire industry move faster, reach more people, and deliver on its promise.

Backed by leading investors (Goldman Sachs, Hedosophia, NEA, Valar, 8VC) and trusted by major carriers, Bestow is powered by a team that moves with precision, purpose, and heart. If you want to help reimagine a centuries-old industry with lasting impact, join us.

Bestow offers flexible remote/hybrid work, meaningful benefits, equity, and substantial growth opportunities.

Bestow uses E-Verify to confirm the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees. To learn more about E-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities, please visit E-Verify.gov.

As Bestow's design team continues to grow, we're creating a new function to ensure the team operates with clarity, efficiency, and autonomy.

If you love bringing order to complexity, care deeply about team health, and get energized by helping creative people thrive — this role is for you.

The Senior Design Operations Manager will be the connective tissue between product design and the broader product org — a systems thinker, strategic partner, and operational force who brings best-in-class design practices and an AI-first mindset (and experience) to dramatically scale the effectiveness of our design team.

Sitting within Product Operations, you'll partner closely with design leadership to build the processes, rituals, and infrastructure that help designers do their best work.

Central to this role is leading our AI-first design operations strategy — identifying, instrumenting, and activating the tools and systems that unlock AI's full potential for everyday design work, driving meaningful efficiency gains across the team.

You won't be inheriting a playbook — you'll be writing one. This role is a rare opportunity to shape what world-class design operations looks like at an AI-native company. We're looking for someone with deep expertise in product design, AI for product development, or both!

Your responsibilities will include:

Developing and Managing Design Processes & Workflows

• Spearhead the team’s strategic implementation of AI in the design workflow, defining how designers effectively use new tools for ideation, prototyping, and asset generation.

• Identify bottlenecks and implements solutions to help the team scale and move faster without sacrificing quality

• Build scalable design processes and knowledge management that work whether the team is 5 people or 50

• Lead the buildout of emerging Research Operations within a growing product and design team - anchored around AI solutions to centrally manage and unlock insights

Managing Design Systems, Artifacts, and AI Enablement

• Establish and enforce standards for design files, ensuring consistency and seamless handoff in a hybrid human-AI design environment.

• Evaluate, implement, and manage the tool stack, with a focus on instrumenting AI-powered design solutions to drive efficiency.

• Stay current on the latest in Design Ops, tooling, and leading the adoption of emerging AI-powered design workflows.

Driving Design Ceremonies & Team Collaboration

• Facilitate and evolve key team rituals: critiques, design reviews, retrospectives, and planning sessions

• Partner with Product and Engineering to streamline cross-functional workflows and reduce friction

• Build bridges between embedded designers across squads so the team stays connected and aligned

Managing Design Systems and Artifacts

• Steward our Figma workspace — structure, naming conventions, component libraries, and version control

• Establish and enforce standards for design files to ensure consistency and easy handoff to engineering

• Maintain a single source of truth for design assets, templates, and documentation

• Evaluate, implement, and manage the toolstack the design team uses day-to-day

• Create and uphold governance for team libraries, design systems, and strategic artifacts

• Stay current on the latest in Design Ops, tooling, and AI-powered design workflows

People & Culture

• Own the function-specific onboarding experience for new design team members

• Foster a healthy culture of feedback, continuous improvement, celebration, and psychological safety

• Administratively support the design leadership team; help define what career growth looks like for designers at Bestow including leveling guides and review processes

Reporting on Design Metrics

• Define and track metrics that show how the design team is performing and where we can improve

• Provide design leadership with team planning clarity including regular visibility into team capacity, velocity, and health

• 5+ years of experience in the product design discipline and/or experience implementing AI solutions for product design/product development processes.

• An outstanding grasp of design fundamentals and the value that product designers are uniquely positioned and tasked to deliver to engineering and the product development lifecycle.

• Strong understanding of product design and UX processes — you don't have to be a designer, but you speak the language fluently.

• Pre-existing experience integrating AI into design workflows.

• Knowledge of or experience with UX research operations or research program management.

• Exceptional communication skills — you can write clearly, effectively facilitate meetings and manage a room, and translate ambiguity into action.

• Hands-on experience with software design tools:

  • Experience managing Figma workspaces at scale (component libraries, design systems, versioning, file governance, etc.).

  • Good-to-have: Knowledge of AI tool implementation in modern design workflows and experience administering project management tools (JIRA, Confluence, Notion, Linear, Asana, etc.).

• Proven ability to build processes from scratch with buy-in from smart, creative, opinionated team members.

• Experience working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and other teams across a company.

• Highly organized with a strong attention to detail, without losing sight of the big picture.

• Systems thinker – able to track a number of high-level views of work and while still able to speak to granular details.

• AI-first attitude – a true believer in the power of AI and excitement about helping build and unleash its potential for designers.

• Comfortable in a fast-moving, startup environment where priorities shift and resourcefulness is essential.

• Intense curiosity and dedication towards evolving daily design practices through substantial industry evolution.

• Good to have: Experience scaling a design team through a period of rapid growth.

At Bestow, we’re proud to be awarded for our team members, innovative products, and culture. Our standard benefits include:

• Competitive salary and equity based on role

• Policies and managers that support work/life balance, like our flexible paid time off and parental leave programs

• 100% paid-premium option for medical, dental, and vision insurance

• Lifestyle stipend to support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing

• Flexible work-from-home policy and open to remote

• Remote and WFH options, as well as a beautiful, state-of-the-art office in Dallas’ Deep Ellum, for those who prefer an office setting

• Employee-led diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives

Recent Employer Awards include:

• Best Place for Working Parents 2023 + 2024 + 2025

• Great Place to Work Certified, 2022 + 2023 + 2024 + 2025

• Built In Best Places to Work, 2022 + 2023 + 2025

• Fortune’s Best Workplaces in Texas 2022 + 2023

• Fortune’s Best Workplaces in Financial Services and Insurance 2022 + 2023 + 2024

We value diversity at Bestow. The company will hire, recruit, and promote regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, pregnancy or maternity, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. We understand the importance of creating a safe and comfortable work environment and encourage individualism and authenticity in every team member.

Thanks for considering a job at Bestow!