Senior Director, Product Design

Sprout Social; Canada; Remote; CAD 245,000 - 369,000; Full time

Job summary

Sprout Social is seeking a Senior Director of Product Design to lead and innovate within their design team. This role involves strategic leadership, mentoring design leaders, and enhancing user experiences across various platforms. The ideal candidate will have extensive design leadership experience and a passion for solving complex problems. Join a company recognized for its culture and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Benefits

Insurance and benefit options

Flexible paid time off

Wellness initiatives

Ongoing education and development opportunities

Qualifications

• 10+ years of design leadership experience.
• Proven track record of driving transformative change.

Responsibilities

• Represent teams as a strategic design leader.
• Lead transformative initiatives to enhance customer engagement.
• Mentor and scale high-performing design teams.

Skills

Leadership

Design Thinking

Strategic Thinking

Problem Solving

Job description

We know experience is built in a number of ways. Even if your background doesn’t match the exact requirements, we encourage you to apply and share any relevant skills in a cover letter. Sprout welcomes all candidates to apply, including those who identify as BIPOC, women and underrepresented genders in tech, LGBTQIA+, parents, veterans, persons with disabilities and people of all faiths.

Senior Director, Product Design

Description

Sprout Social is looking to hire a Senior Director to the Product Design team.

Why join Sprout’s Product Design team?

Design is in our DNA at Sprout,from our best-in-class products and award-winning user experience, to our elegant customer journey and the systems that power our teams. We’ve built a Product Design program centered on the pursuit of growing leaders and tailoring growth paths to individuals—recognizing that every designer is at their best when they’re challenged to grow in ways that map to their unique strengths and opportunities. Supported and challenged by a diverse and connected design community, and armed with an expansive human-centered toolkit, our talented creative problem solvers demonstrate the true power of design to drive business impact, and lead their teams to see social differently.

What you’ll do

• Represent your teams as a strategic design leader across Platform, Publishing, Mobile, and Advocacy, championing a unified vision that fosters innovation and elevates our user experience
• Build strong partnerships with engineering, product, and executive leadership to align on shared goals and embed design thinking in cross-functional decision-making
• Lead transformative initiatives that simplify complex workflows, enhance customer engagement, and make progress toward our shared vision - pushing us to deliver exceptional product experiences that earn customer loyalty
• As a leader of design leaders, mentor and scale high-performing design teams, setting high standards for design excellence and creating a culture of continuous learning and growth
• Show how great design can both help our business grow and create experiences people truly love

What you’ll bring

You bring a visionary yet pragmatic approach to design leadership, with an infectious curiosity that transforms complex challenges into breakthrough solutions. Your passion for solving systemic problems is matched by your ability to inspire and elevate the teams you lead. You thrive at the intersection of strategic thinking and hands-on craft, delighting in both teaching others and continuously learning yourself.

The minimum qualifications for this role include:

• 10+ years of design leadership experience, with a proven track record of driving transformative change across product teams
• Seasoned people leader with experience leading other design leaders
• A portfolio that tells a compelling story of design impact - showcasing how you've reshaped product direction, sparked organizational innovation, and built high-performing teams that consistently deliver meaningful results

Preferred qualifications for this role include:

• Experience leading design across enterprise SaaS platforms with complex, interconnected user journeys; platform or systems experience a plus
• Executive presence and deep expertise in influencing strategy, with demonstrated success aligning cross-functional teams around bold, user-centered visions
• A track record of mentoring design leaders and building best-in-class design cultures that attract and develop exceptional talent
• Demonstrated ability to balance visionary thinking with pragmatic execution, helping teams maintain focus amid ambiguity and broader organizational change

How you’ll grow

Within 1 month, you’ll plant your roots, including:

• Experience Sprout’s in-depth onboarding, covering everything from our company mission and values, hearing directly from executive leaders, to deep training on our products and the value that Sprout delivers to our customers.
• Partner with the Design Leadership team to define success for your role and your team
• Build relationships across Sprout so that you understand the business and the partners you’ll need to help your team make progress.
• Get to know your counterparts within our product organization and form important bonds with Product and Engineering operations leaders.
• Learn how Sprout has done things to date, and think about how we make our team and processes even better going forward!

Within 3 months, you’ll start hitting your stride by:

• Begin to understand the complexities your designers and design leaders are facing, and offer early guidance on things you might be able to try together.
• Attend leadership rituals across the wide range of teams you’ll be interacting with
• Get up to speed on the ongoing work of the Product Design practice, as well as what’s on the horizon and could benefit from your strategic partnership.
• Influence a strong culture of design critique and collaboration, offering your thought leadership to ensure our designers feel empowered and our work are held to a high-quality standard.
• Weigh in on hiring and organizational planning, helping align design skill sets to business needs.

Within 6 months, you’ll be making a clear impact through:

• Mature and strengthen your influence on our design and product strategy.
• Introduce new tools, systems and processes to improve design’s value to the business.
• Support and enable the performance review and career band calibration process for the product design team.
• Expand the breadth and depth of your operations toolkit, and your exposure to new challenges, ideas and perspectives.

Within 12 months, you’ll make this role your own by:

• Inspiring Product Design and the broader org with new ways of thinking and working.
• Dreaming with design leadership on our long term team vision.
• Defining what design leadership means at Sprout. We can’t wait to hear your own unique ideas of how you’ll make our work and our company even better.
• Exploring involvement in communities in and outside of Sprout, considering opportunities to add your voice and talent to our Community Resource Groups, and ways to live out our company values in the public and civic spaces that matter most to you.

Of course what is outlined above is the ideal timeline, but things may shift based on business needs and other projects and tasks could be added at the discretion of your manager.

Our Benefits ProgramWe’re proud to regularly be recognized for our team, product and culture. Our benefits program includes:

• Insurance and benefit options that are built for both individuals and families
• Progressive policies to support work/life balance, like our flexible paid time off and parental leave program
• High-quality and well-maintained equipment—your computer will never prevent you from doing your best
• Wellness initiatives to ensure both health and mental well-being of our team
• Ongoing education and development opportunities via our Grow@Sprout program, employee-led diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and mentorship programs for aspiring leaders
• Growing corporate social responsibility program that is driven by the involvement and passion of our team members

The base pay range for this role is $245,800 (min), $307,200 (mid), $368,600 (max) CAD annually. Individual base pay is based on various factors, including work location, relevant experience and skills, the responsibility of the role, and job duties/requirements.

The listed ranges represent the full earning potential in this position. Starting salaries for well-qualified new hires are typically around the midpoint of the range. These ranges were determined by a market-based compensation approach; we used data from trusted third-party compensation sources to set equitable, consistent, and competitive ranges. We also evaluate compensation bi-annually, identify any changes in the market and make adjustments to our ranges and existing employee compensation as needed.

Base pay is only one element of an employee's total compensation at Sprout. Every Sprout team member has an opportunity to receive restricted stock units (RSUs) under Sprout’s equity plan. We have outlined the various components to an employee’s full compensation package here to help you to understand our total rewards package.

Candidates for this remote work opportunity must be based in either British Columbia or Ontario. If you are based in another location within Canada, we aren’t able to hire in your location at this time; however, if you’d like to stay in touch with us in case that changes in the future, please apply and we’ll save your application for possible future consideration.

When you apply for employment with Sprout Social, we will process your job applicant data, including your employment and education history, transcript, writing samples, and references as necessary to consider your job application for open positions. Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., and Crosschq, Inc., cloud services providers located in the United States of America and engaged by Sprout Social to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Controller’s behalf. Accordingly, if you are located outside of the United States, by clicking “Submit Application” on this site, you consent to the transfer of your personal data to the United States. For more information about our privacy practices please visit our Privacy Policy . California residents have additional rights and should review the Additional Disclosures for California Residents section in our Privacy Policy.

Sprout Social is a global leader in social media management and analytics software. Sprout’s intuitive platform offers comprehensive social media management solutions, including publishing and engagement functionality, customer care, influencer marketing, advocacy, and AI-powered business intelligence to more than 30,000 brands. Founded in 2010, Sprout has a hybrid team located across the globe. Sprout Social has been recognized as a Glassdoor Best Places to Work, PEOPLE Companies that Care, Great Place to Work Best Workplace for Parents and more.

Sprout Social powers open communication between individuals, brands and communities through elegant, sophisticated software. We are relentless about solving hard problems for our customers and committed to both customer and team success. Our team’s shared belief in Sprout’s mission promotes a culture of openness, empowerment and fun.