Director, Design Operations

About the Role The Director, Design Operations is the operational backbone of the Experience Design practice at Gap Inc. This role defines and runs the processes, tools, workflows, and capacity management systems that enable a high-performing UX team to deliver inside a product operating model. Reporting to the VP of Experience Design, you will be directly responsible for how work comes in, how it gets prioritized, how capacity is allocated across value streams, and how quality is tracked and improved.

Gap Inc.’s Experience Design team operates across four brands (Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Athleta), three journey tracks (Customer, Product, Enterprise), and a managed services partnership that includes 48 designers across onshore and offshore locations. The practice is transitioning from an ad-hoc, project-driven model to an integrated product operating model with clear value stream alignment, stage-gated delivery, and measurable outcomes. Design Operations is what makes this transition  this role, you will own the full UX operating model: intake, prioritization, estimation, stage gates, capacity planning, tooling, reporting, and the operational governance of our managed services partnership.

You will build and continuously improve the systems that make the design function visible, accountable, and effective  will also lead research operations, enabling the infrastructure that supports AI-augmented research pipelines and enterprise-wide insights distribution.

This is not an administrative role. It is a leadership position that requires someone who is passionate about operational excellence as a craft, someone who sees process design with the same rigor a UX designer brings to product design. You will be a strong voice and advocate for the design function across the organization while building the trusted relationships with Product Management, Engineering, and Brand partners that earn design a seat at every table.

This role is based in San Francisco (2 Folsom Street) and requires onsite presence four or more days per week. Physical proximity to the VP of Experience Design, GTS leadership, and managed service partners is essential to the day-to-day partnership and problem-solving this role demands.

What You'll DoDefine, implement, and continuously improve the end-to-end UX operating model: intake, prioritization, estimation, stage gates (G0–G4), design review cadences, and delivery workflows. Ensure the design practice is fully integrated into the product operating model, not running as a parallel track.

Own UX capacity planning across Gap FTE and managed service provider resources. Maintain rolling visibility into who is working on what, where capacity exists, and where demand exceeds supply. When tradeoffs are needed, surface them clearly so prioritization decisions are conscious, not accidental.

Facilitate cross-domain resource allocation decisions by surfacing capacity data and conflicts to domain design leaders, who own assignment decisions within their scope. Serve as first-line arbitrator for cross-domain resource conflicts, escalating to the VP of Experience Design only when domain leaders cannot reach resolution.

Manage the operational relationship with the managed service provider: onboarding, knowledge transfer, quality standards, performance tracking, and continuous improvement. Define the boundary between Gap Design Ops (system, governance, strategy) and MSP Design Ops (execution coordination, sprint management, onshore-offshore handoffs). Ensure managed service provider resources are productive, accountable, and integrated into product teams.

Own the UX tooling ecosystem:
Figma, Jira, Confluence, Zeroheight, Storybook, dscout, and emerging AI tools. Evaluate, adopt, configure, and drive adoption. Have strong opinions about how tools should serve workflow, not the other way around.

Leverage AI tooling across all aspects of Design Operations for efficiency: AI-assisted intake triage, automated capacity reporting, AI-powered QA checks, intelligent backlog prioritization, and streamlined reporting. Continuously identify new opportunities to use AI to improve how design teams work.

Build and maintain dashboards and reporting systems that give UX leadership, Product Management, and Engineering real-time visibility into design capacity, throughput, quality, and bottlenecks. Track and report on contractual UX SLAs, driving baselining, instrumentation, and measurable improvement.

Cultivate design system ambassadors across the organization. Identify representatives from each contributing team to act as liaisons with the central design system team, ensuring alignment, coordination, and consistent adoption across brands and value streams.

Partner with UX Research leadership to build and scale research operations: participant recruitment pipelines, panel management, study scheduling, repository management, and insights distribution. Enable the AI-augmented research pipeline vision by providing the operational…