Design Manager

The ideal candidate will be located in the Midwest (Central Time Zone) or Eastern (Eastern Time Zone) United States.

High Level Purpose of the Role:

In this influential leadership role, you will lead a dynamic team of designers dedicated to supporting our dealer partners, end users, and the Architecture & Design community. You will oversee the creation of strategic design solutions that blend functionality, aesthetics, and competitive positioning-while leading a team that actively supports and drives revenue growth.

This role goes beyond traditional design management. You will innovate how manufacturer designers partner with sales, leverage digital tools, and deliver scalable services that strengthen dealer relationships and enhance the overall design ecosystem.

This multifaceted role requires strategic collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders across sales, products, digital tools, and dealer partners. You will cultivate a high-performing team culture while leveraging market insights, customer trends, and competitive intelligence to continuously evolve how design supports the business.

Success in this role means strengthening relationships, modernizing service models, and delivering innovative, scalable design solutions that elevate the client experience and position design as a proactive driver of growth-not just a reactive support function.

In partnership with Sales and senior leadership, you will ensure design resources are strategically aligned to high-value opportunities. You will establish clear prioritization frameworks, optimize team capacity, and position design as a measurable contributor to win-rate and revenue growth.

Roles & Responsibilities

Leadership

* Inspires and motivates the design team to reach new heights and deliver exceptional solutions to our customers

* Creates & drives the business actions needed when business conditions change or new product categories are launched

* Proactively drives business enhancements & continuous improvements based upon customer requirements

* Measures & manages team performance

Design Team Coordination & Process

* Drives development & continuous improvement on technology enablers, database, training & development platform that facilitates desired performance, best practices & key learnings across Design Team

* Creates & drives the business actions needed to enable Design Strategists, Outsource Specifiers, Dealers, Designers the ability to create value-spec solutions

* Facilitates best practices, key learnings & trends on products, specs, and project execution tips across Design team. Drives information & feedback to Technical team, Product Development/ Positioning & Marketing

* Directs the internal Design Strategists and assigned to areas of Marketing, Product Development/Positioning & Training

Design Team Training & Development

* Creates & maintains a training & development platform for Design Strategists

* Documents training plan for each team member, inclusive of approximate timeline dependent upon type of skill set entering into the role

* Collaborates with Sales and A&D Leadership on additional training & development to improve performance in specification accuracy, speed, application usage & business needs to improve win ratio

* Drives sharing of tips & best practices amongst Design Team

Outsource Specification Network

* Organizes & maintains an audited outsource network for specification overflow.

* Works directly with Sales Leaders to source & manage outsource specifiers

* Drives common understanding & execution of adjusting business processes to align with dealer, A&D, & Sales Leadership needs

* Assess outsource specifiers through use of formal audit process, or Design Team feedback

Measurements of Performance

* Collaborates with Sales teams on continuous improvement efforts related to Design Team

* Outsource Efficiency:
Data guides decisions on when and where to outsource design work for cost-effectiveness

* Progress Tracking:
Uses data-driven metrics to measure team progress on projects. Ensure proper information is being shared from field sales to move a project through the funnel in a timely manner

* Resource Allocation:
Analyzes data to optimize…