Product Operations Manager (DesignOps)

Firstminute Capital; Paris; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Mistral is seeking a Product Operations Manager (Design) to streamline the operations of the design team. You will define the operating system, cadences, rituals, and forums that keep design aligned and moving forward, reducing ad-hoc work.

You will own weekly and quarterly cadences, coordinate interlocks with Brand, Marketing, Product Design, and GTM, and build a single source of truth for design work. This is a founder-level role with AI-driven automation and a design-ops mindset.

Qualifications

• 6–10 years of experience in design operations, product operations, program management, or a chief-of-staff role within a creative or product organization.
• A founding design-ops mindset — you've built operational disciplines from scratch, not just maintained inherited ones.
• Comfortable automating with AI tools to remove repetitive overhead, while equally skilled at coordinating people and building coalitions without authority.
• Strong systems thinking — you design repeatable rhythms and processes, not just run meetings.
• Design literacy — enough background to have felt the pain designers feel and to be credible with the team.
• A make-it-happen attitude: positive, bias to action, unblocks rather than escalates.
• Excellent communication and synthesis skills — you turn scattered signals into a shared source of truth.
• Ability to thrive in ambiguity and define your own scope in a role with no playbook and no team to delegate to.

Responsibilities

• Define the operating system of the design team — the cadences, forums, rituals, and source-of-truth that keep the team aligned and moving forward.
• Own the weekly and quarterly cadences, from leadership syncs and critiques to planning, retros, and headcount-cycle inputs.
• Coordinate the Brand × Marketing and Product × Product Design interlocks so design work is surfaced with enough lead time and dependencies are planned, not discovered late.
• Establish how the team tracks and shares out work — a single source of truth for status, and the forums where design is made legible to the rest of the org.
• Design and hold decision-making forums so decisions get made, recorded, and not relitigated.
• Separate ritual from overhead — keep the cadences that create alignment and cut the ones that are just tax.
• Automate repetitive coordination, reporting, and tracking with AI so the team spends time on design, not admin.
• Bring the wider Product Operations toolkit to the design team — data and analytics for transparent reporting, structured feedback loops and early-access programmes, and launch coordination that aligns design work with product release cycles and go-to-market timing.
• Partner with marketing, PMs, engineering and GTM to align design work with go-to-market timing and surface what's shipping.

Skills

Design operations

Product operations

Program management

Chief of staff mindset

Automation with AI

Systems thinking

Design literacy

Communication skills

Ambiguity management

Job description

About Mistral

Mistral provides full-stack AI solutions: from frontier models to developer tools, applications, and compute. We partner with enterprises tackling the hardest problems across high-stakes industries like finance, manufacturing, defense, healthcare, and the public sector, co-creating customized AI systems that they can run on their terms.

We are a dynamic, collaborative team passionate about AI and its potential to transform society. Our diverse workforce thrives in competitive environments and is committed to driving innovation. Our teams are distributed between Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. We are creative, low-ego and team-spirited.

The Role

As a Product Operations Manager (Design), you will sit within Mistral's Product Operations function, with a focus on streamlining the operations of the design team. You will own how the Design team operates as a system — its cadences, its rituals, its coordination, and the connective tissue that lets designers focus on design. This role exists because a design org at our scale needs someone whose full-time job is the operating system itself: defining it, holding it, and continuously tuning it so the team runs with a heartbeat rather than on ad-hoc heroics.

You will own the team's weekly and quarterly cadences — from leadership syncs to planning, retros, and share-outs — and establish how we track work, surface it outward, and make decisions. You'll design the forums where decisions get made and recorded, keep the rituals that create alignment, and aggressively cut the ones that are just overhead.

Equally, you are the bridge across the org. You will coordinate the interlocks between Brand and Marketing for upcoming launches, and between Product and Product Design for the build pipeline — so interdependencies are understood and planned for, not discovered at the last minute. You will partner closely with marketing, PMs, engineering, GTM to align design work with go-to-market timing and surface what's shipping before it ships.

This is a team-of-one role with a founding design-ops mentality. You will build the discipline from scratch, automate repetitive coordination with AI where it helps, and coordinate people where it matters. You report to the Head of Product Operations, working day-to-day with the Head of Design and the design team.

What You Will Do

• Define the operating system of the design team — the cadences, forums, rituals, and source-of-truth that keep the team aligned and moving forward.

• Own the weekly and quarterly cadences, from leadership syncs and critiques to planning, retros, and headcount-cycle inputs.

• Coordinate the Brand × Marketing and Product × Product Design interlocks so design work is surfaced with enough lead time and dependencies are planned, not discovered late.

• Establish how the team tracks and shares out work — a single source of truth for status, and the forums where design is made legible to the rest of the org.

• Design and hold decision-making forums so decisions get made, recorded, and not relitigated.

• Separate ritual from overhead — keep the cadences that create alignment and cut the ones that are just tax.

• Automate repetitive coordination, reporting, and tracking with AI so the team spends time on design, not admin.

• Bring the wider Product Operations toolkit to the design team — data and analytics for transparent reporting, structured feedback loops and early-access programmes, and launch coordination that aligns design work with product release cycles and go-to-market timing.

• Partner with marketing, PMs, engineering and GTM to align design work with go-to-market timing and surface what's shipping.

What We're Looking For

• 6–10 years of experience in design operations, product operations, program management, or a chief-of-staff role within a creative or product organization.

• A founding design-ops mindset — you've built operational disciplines from scratch, not just maintained inherited ones.

• Comfortable automating with AI tools to remove repetitive overhead, while equally skilled at coordinating people and building coalitions without authority.

• Strong systems thinking — you design repeatable rhythms and processes, not just run meetings.

• Design literacy — enough background to have felt the pain designers feel and to be credible with the team.

• A make-it-happen attitude: positive, bias to action, unblocks rather than escalates.

• Excellent communication and synthesis skills — you turn scattered signals into a shared source of truth.

• Ability to thrive in ambiguity and define your own scope in a role with no playbook and no team to delegate to.

What We Offer

We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your well-being, growth, and work-life balance. Benefits vary by country and may include healthcare coverage, parental leave, retirement plans, relocation support, wellness programs, meal and transportation allowances, and other location-specific perks.

For the most up-to-date details on benefits available in your location, please refer to our Benefits page.

Privacy Policy

Your privacy matters to us. You can learn more about how we handle your personal data in our Applicant Privacy Policy.