Product Design Manager

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Product Design Manager
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📍 Location:
Brighton
💖 Department:
Product
📅 Position type:
Full-time, hybrid (Mondays and Wednesdays in office)

As Product Design Manager, you will lead and develop MPB’s multidisciplinary Product Design team across UX, UI/Visual Design, Content Design and Research. Reporting to the Head of Product Design, you’ll balance people leadership with operational oversight and design quality assurance, ensuring the team is supported, resourced, and delivering high-impact work across the MPB product ecosystem.

Working closely with the Lead UX Designer, Product Ops and Product Leads, you’ll help create the conditions for excellent design delivery while enabling the Head of Product Design to focus on strategic direction and long-term vision.

• Line-manage designers across UX, visual design, content design and research.

• Provide coaching, performance reviews, career development support and day-to-day guidance.

• Lead UX Research governance, including thought leadership and large-scale research projects.

• Foster a healthy, collaborative design culture grounded in autonomy, trust and continuous improvement.

• Partner with Product Leads and Technology leadership to ensure smooth discovery and delivery.

• Lead and maintain design rituals, processes, hiring practices and feedback cycles.

• Ensure alignment with product and squad-level ways of working.

• Collaborate with Product Ops on:

  • Research operations

  • Design tooling, documentation and process improvements

  • Rituals like crits, retros, reviews and sprint planning

• Own onboarding, hiring operations and resource planning for the design team.

• Maintain and evolve MPB’s design career frameworks across all disciplines.

• Support SDLC optimisation in collaboration with Product Ops and Product Leads.

• Work with the Lead UX Designer and Head of Product Design to ensure consistent, high-quality design output.

• Review work regularly with designers and provide clear, actionable feedback.

• Coordinate and facilitate team-wide design critique and QA processes.

• Stay closely involved in day-to-day squad workflows without micromanaging.

• Implement and evolve design critique practices, review cadences and QA standards to continually raise the bar.

• Promote best practices across the full design lifecycle.

• Support the growth of craft excellence across all design disciplines.

• Help nurture an inclusive, high-performing and collaborative design culture.

• Coordinate knowledge-sharing, design learning and team development initiatives.

• Act as the main point of contact for PMs, Product Leads and Product Ops on design delivery.

• Work with the Lead UX Designer on team-wide initiatives (e.g. platform improvements, NLX rollouts, content patterns).

• Support planning and prioritisation of design work across product areas.

• Translate strategic design direction into operational clarity for squads.

• Build strong partnerships across product, engineering, data and marketing.

• Experienced in managing cross-functional product design teams (UX, visual, content, research).

• Strong background as a product designer with a deep understanding of end-to-end design practice.

• Proven ability to coach, develop and retain high-performing design talent.

• Strong design judgment with the ability to provide detailed, constructive feedback.

• Solid understanding of design operations, QA processes and delivery frameworks.

• Comfortable working in cross-functional product teams with Agile methodologies.

• Excellent communication, facilitation and conflict-resolution skills.

• Strong partnership instincts with product, engineering, data and marketing.

• Track record of improving team workflows, rituals, hiring and onboarding.

• Working knowledge of research ops, design systems or AI/NLX UX is a plus.

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