Design Operations Manager, Systems and AI Enablement

Yahoo serves as a trusted guide for hundreds of millions of people globally, helping them achieve their goals online through our portfolio of iconic products. For advertisers, Yahoo Advertising offers omnichannel solutions and powerful data to engage with our brands and deliver results.

The Yahoo Design team is a collaborative group of creatives, builders, and strategists dedicated to crafting exceptional product experiences for millions of global users. We focus on scaling design excellence through cutting‑edge design systems, operational rigor, and the thoughtful integration of emerging technologies.

We're looking for a Design Operations Manager to lead systems operations and AI tooling operations strategy across Yahoo Design. This role sits at the intersection of program management, design systems governance, tooling operations, and AI enablement.

You will partner closely with Yahoo's Design Systems team and Central Design Leadership to drive planning, governance, tooling, and AI enablement across the organization. This is an individual contributor role for someone who combines strong program management expertise with design fluency, a genuine curiosity for AI and emerging technologies, and a track record of building scalable systems.

• Drive roadmap planning, prioritization, resource allocation, milestone tracking, dependency management, risk mitigation, and adoption reporting across Yahoo OS design initiatives.
• Leverage approved AI project management features (such as Asana AI and Atlassian AI) to automate program tracking, milestone reporting, and workflow efficiencies across major initiatives.
• Own strategic program and project management for major Yahoo OS initiatives, including systems consolidation, component creation and adoption, AI enablement framework efforts, expressive workstream adoption and testing, patterns libraries, tokens, and governance.
• Track milestones, risks, dependencies, adoption and test plans with business units and contingency plans across all active Yahoo OS work streams.
• Facilitate alignment and decision‑making across Design, Engineering, Product, Inclusive Design, UXR, Content Design, Legal, and Compliance partners; manage intake, contribution workflows, design system reviews, migrations, and governance processes.
• Manage recurring cadences, roadmap reviews, planning sessions, governance meetings, workshops, offsites, executive reporting, and organizational communications.
• Support launch readiness, stakeholder communications, onboarding resources, knowledge management, documentation strategy, and adoption enablement.
• Coordinate rollout, adoption, communications, and operational support for Yahoo OS AI workflows, MCPs, starter kits, AI Pilot Program initiatives, and emerging AI‑driven design processes.
• Coordinate launch support, executive requests, governance escalations, and other high‑priority cross‑functional initiatives.
• Identify opportunities to streamline workflows, improve operational efficiency, and proactively introduce AI‑driven automation across systems operations.
• Establish clear pathways for completed visual design work to move into Yahoo OS.

• Define and manage the AI tooling roadmap, including rollout planning, onboarding, adoption tracking, and ongoing optimization.
• Translate AI experimentation, pilot programs, and emerging capabilities into scalable guidance, documentation, and best practices, leveraging enterprise‑approved platforms (e.g. Anthropic Claude) to accelerate work where it adds value.
• Partner with Design leadership to operationalize AI‑enabled workflows and drive adoption across teams.
• Manage AI vendor onboarding and operations, including licensing, provisioning, renewals, and access management.
• Coordinate closely with Privacy, Legal, Security, IT, and Procurement to ensure compliant, secure, and responsible implementation of AI tools.
• Establish measurement frameworks to track adoption, effectiveness, and business impact of AI initiatives.
• Serve as a strategic partner to Learning + Development programs, helping…