Product Design Manager

Orah; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Orah, based in Toronto, is seeking a Product Design Manager to own a development pod end-to-end—framing problems, designing solutions, and shipping with engineering.

You may come from product management or UX design, bridging product and design, setting priorities, guiding delivery, and measuring outcomes for schools served. This hybrid role emphasizes collaboration across teams in a fast-growing environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in a product-facing or equivalent role.
• Strong Agile/Scrum proficiency and ability to lead cross-functional teams.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills.
• Ability to translate complex systems into simple requirements.
• Experience aligning product and design to drive outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Lead a development pod end-to-end: framing problems, designing solutions and shipping with engineering.
• Define and maintain short- and long-term roadmaps; prioritize resources to meet goals.
• Conduct UX research, develop personas, prototypes, and design specs.
• Collaborate across engineering, QA, design, sales, and customer success.
• Maintain design system adherence and drive design knowledge sharing.

Skills

Product management

UX design

Roadmap planning

Cross-functional collaboration

Agile / Scrum

Communication

Problem solving

Job description

At Orah, we're building technology that helps schools keep students safe and gives parents greater confidence in knowing where their children are. Our platform is growing rapidly, particularly across North America, and we're continuing to build our engineering team to support that growth.

What you'll be doing

We're hiring a Product Design Manager to own a development pod end to end: understanding the problem, designing the solution, and shipping it with engineering.

This role suits one of two people. You might be a product manager who wants to own the user experience as well as the roadmap, instead of handing work off to a designer. Or you might be a UX designer who wants to own more of the product side: priorities, delivery, and the outcomes your work drives.

AI tools have made it far more realistic for one person to work across both. We want someone who's keen to do that, bridging product and design, leading a pod, and being accountable for results for the schools we serve.

What we're looking for

• Guide the overall vision and direction of assigned products, and define/maintain short- and long-term roadmaps.
• Prioritise and allocate product resources to meet Orah's quarterly and annual goals; ensure delivery of key updates against those goals.
• Explore and propose initiatives that drive customer satisfaction, retention, and expansion.
• Maintain and prioritise the product feature request and feedback backlog from internal and external sources.

Design & User Experience

• Conduct UX research and user testing to inform, validate, and ensure the usability of designs for key personas.
• Develop user personas, prototypes, system design specs, and process diagrams to communicate how interfaces, systems, and workflows function.
• Use text, icons, colour, and imagery to communicate clearly and effectively.
• Maintain adherence to Orah's design system, and evaluate/implement design tooling as needed.
• Conduct design reviews on QAT and staging environments prior to production release.
• Ship incremental UX improvements with engineering review.
• Lead design knowledge-sharing and best practices across the design team.
• Create marketing and support materials as needed.

Delivery & Sprint Execution

• Lead sprint planning, backlog grooming, and retrospectives; own the sprint goal and scope clarity with the team.
• Prioritise and maintain the sprint backlog; break down epics into actionable user stories with clear acceptance criteria and definition of done.
• Remove blockers, facilitate decisions, and own the quality and timeliness of sprint outcomes.
• Monitor progress against roadmap commitments and flag risks early.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Voice of the Customer

• Partner closely with engineering, QA, design, sales, customer success, and other Product Managers; keep stakeholders informed on progress, changes, and releases.
• Meet regularly with customers and users to understand and prioritise their needs, ensuring those needs are embedded in sprint delivery.
• Drive internal feedback loops from Support, Sales, and Customer Success.
• Provide input and support other PDMs, modules, and products that sit outside of your portfolio as needed.

Technical Planning

• Work with engineers to scope technical requirements for proposed solutions, including how technologies like SSO and identity/access management can be leveraged.
• Coordinate feasibility spikes with engineering to de-risk technical unknowns and complex implementations.
• Research potential integrations with ecosystem products (SIS, LMS, timetabling, etc.).
• Support planning of data models and architecture to improve product quality and outcomes.

Quality Assurance

• Ensure all stories have clear testing criteria and are well tested before release.
• Oversee the bug board, maintaining customer SLA/OLA targets; troubleshoot and diagnose bugs at the database and code level, including directly with customers on complex issues.
• Keep customers and the team informed on the status of active bugs.

Documentation & Knowledge Sharing

• Maintain product knowledge bases (e.g. Notion): change logs, release notes, technical and user-level specs, help articles, integration docs, onboarding requirements, and key business rules.
• Post regular product updates to customers and the team on new features, enhancements, and fixes.
• Facilitate product training for GTM teams (training videos, courses, live sessions).
• Document internal processes and design process as needed for consistency.

Operational Excellence

• Set up and maintain product analytics and success metrics (e.g. Mixpanel) across the pod and portfolio.
• Design and implement reports/dashboards to track performance (sprint velocity, bug resolution, delivery adherence).
• Drive adoption of AI tools across areas of responsibility.
• Design and implement systems/processes to improve product team productivity and effectiveness.

Must-Haves:

• 5+ years in a Product facing or equivalent role
• Strong understanding of Agile / Scrum practices
• Excellent communication and documentation skills
• Ability to break down complexity into simple, clear steps
• Understand complex systems to drive problem solving across all aspects of product development and support
• Confident working with engineering, design, and GTM teams day-to-day
• Confidence to work directly with customers when needed

Availability

• Hybrid in office at 507 King Street East, Toronto. Three days a week in office (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday)
• Available for key product ceremonies (sprint planning, grooming) with engineering pods based in India, Japan, and Australia and the product team.
• Availability for meetings with teams from different timezones (Canada, US, Australia, UK, Japan, India) on a semi regular basis