Product Design Manager, Vertical

Position: Product Design Manager, Vertical Experiences
Let's face it, a company whose mission is human transformation better have some fresh thinking about the employer/employee relationship.

We do. We can't cram it all in here, but you'll start noticing it from the first interview.

Even our candidate experience is different. And when you get an offer from us (and accept it), you get way more than a paycheck. You get a personal Better Up Coach, a development plan, a trained and coached manager, the most amazing team you've ever met (yes, each with their own personal Better Up Coach), and most importantly, work that matters.

This makes for a remarkably focused and fulfilling work experience. Frankly, it's not for everyone. But for people with fire in their belly, it's a game-changing, career-defining, soul-lifting move.

Join us and we promise you the most intense and fulfilling years of your career, doing life-changing work in a fun, inventive, soulful culture.

If that sounds exciting-and the job description below feels like a fit-we really should start talking.

The Opportunity

You will manage and mentor a pod of four product designers covering Better Up's core coaching experiences across member, partner, and coach surfaces. This is a player-coach role-you run design operations for your pod while maintaining craft standards across your area.

Your pod owns four interconnected surface areas:
Partner experience (Partner Hub, Performance Intelligence, and Buyer), Individual coaching (Manage, Lead, and Ready), Group coaching (Dare to Lead, Guided Journey, and Team tooling), and Coach experience (the professional platform coaches use to manage their practice). Each requires a different design lens, and your job is to ensure coherence and quality across all of them.

What You'll Do

* Manage and develop four direct reports across multiple time zones, with consistent 1:1s, actionable feedback, and individualized growth support

* Run design operations for your pod: review cadence, Figma hygiene, handoff standards, and sprint participation

* Ensure design is in the room at kickoff-before the PRD is written, not after

* Enforce sign-off gates before work moves to engineering, maintaining quality and consistency across your surfaces

* Partner directly with VP Product counterparts for Partner, Coach, and Member pods to align on priorities and tradeoffs

* Surface experience quality issues across your surfaces and bring them to weekly design review

* Contribute to team-wide rituals: cross-pod critiques, design jams, and quarterly dogfooding

* Maintain craft standards as a player-coach-you are still a designer, not just a manager; taste and collaboration with growth, core, AI, and design systems teams matter

What You'll Bring

* 7+ years of product design experience, including people management experience

* Experience managing product designers across multiple product areas simultaneously

* Strong systems thinking-the surfaces you own span B2B, B2C, and two-sided interactions

* A track record of getting design upstream, not just executing on PM direction

* Comfort operating without perfect information in a fast-moving environment

* Player-coach mindset-craft and taste are as important as management skills

* Proficiency with Figma and modern design tools; familiarity with prototyping and design systems workflows

* Experience with AI-powered design tools and workflows (e.g., AI-assisted prototyping, generative design, AI-powered user research analysis)

You'll Thrive Here if You

* Experience designing for coaching, health, or human development platforms

* Familiarity with enterprise B2B design patterns and complex administrative workflows

* Experience with two-sided marketplace or platform design

* Background integrating AI capabilities into product experiences

AI at Better Up

Our team thrives at the intersection of human expertise and AI capability. As an AI-forward company, adaptation and continuous learning are part of our daily work. We're looking for teammates who are excited to evolve alongside technology - people who experiment boldly, share their discoveries openly, and help define best practices for AI-augmented work. These professionals thoughtfully integrate AI into their work to deliver exceptional results while maintaining the human judgment and creativity that drives real innovation.

During our interview process, you'll have opportunities to showcase how you harness AI to learn, iterate, and amplify your impact.

As a Product Design Manager, you'll:

* Model openness to AI-powered change and encourage teammates to try new ways of working

* Adopt new AI tools with curiosity, help the team unlearn outdated habits, and support emotional resilience during AI-driven transition

* Create a psychologically safe environment for the team to experiment with AI tools and share both successes and failures

* Actively use AI in your own design work and transparently share your process with the team

During our interview process, you'll have opportunities to showcase how you harness AI to learn, iterate, and amplify your…