Design Operations Lead

Salla; Jeddah; On-site; SAR 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A digital commerce platform in Saudi Arabia is seeking a Design Operations Lead to streamline design processes and foster collaboration across teams. The ideal candidate will have over 5 years of experience in DesignOps and proficiency in tools like Figma and Jira. They will be responsible for auditing workflows, building roadmaps, and improving design-to-development handoffs. Fluency in Arabic and English is essential. This role offers a unique opportunity to impact the organization's design strategy and culture.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in DesignOps or similar roles.
• Hands-on experience with scalable design systems.
• Fluent in Arabic and English.

Responsibilities

• Audit current design workflows to identify gaps.
• Build and maintain a multi-quarter DesignOps roadmap.
• Establish shared design process frameworks.
• Collaborate with HR on capacity planning and onboarding.
• Integrate UX writers into the design lifecycle.
• Improve design-to-development handoff.
• Govern design system lifecycle.
• Standardize design tools and practices.
• Create dashboards to monitor design metrics.
• Track measurable design KPIs.
• Promote strong design culture.

Skills

Experience in DesignOps

Proficiency in Figma

Communication skills

Experience with Jira

Experience with Confluence

Experience with Notion

Ability to define success metrics

Empathetic leadership

Tools

Figma

Jira

Confluence

Notion

Job description

At Salla, we’re redefining digital commerce across the region. Our ecosystem unifies marketplaces, payments, shipping, and operations into one platform empowering merchants to grow and innovate effortlessly.

We’re hiring a Design Operations Lead who will bring clarity, consistency, and collaboration to how design happens at Salla. You’ll work across squads to align processes, connect designers and UX writers, and ensure smooth handoffs with engineering enabling our design org to scale with excellence and impact.

Core Responsibilities

• Lead a full audit of current design workflows across squads to identify gaps, inefficiencies, and automation opportunities.
• Build and maintain a multi-quarter DesignOps roadmap aligned with product and design OKRs to support scalable growth.
• Establish shared design process frameworks including reviews, documentation, collaboration standards, and rituals.
• Partner with HR and Design Leadership on capacity planning, onboarding, and team health programs
• Integrate UX writers more deeply into the design lifecycle to ensure tone consistency and reduce rework.
• Collaborate with engineering to improve design-to-development handoff, QA processes, and delivery quality.
• Govern and operationalize the design system lifecycle—versioning, adoption tracking, and cross-platform alignment.
• Standardize design tools and practices across teams (Figma branching, file structure, component governance, version control).
• Create dashboards and reporting to monitor design velocity, delivery health, process efficiency, and quality metrics.
• Define and track measurable design KPIs such as delivery velocity, rework rate, design quality, and team satisfaction.
• Promote strong design culture through rituals, knowledge sharing, internal documentation, and cross-squad alignment.
• Serve as the connective layer between design, product, and engineering to enable clarity of communication, timelines, and expectations.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in DesignOps, Product Design, or similar operational design roles.
• Hands‑on experience building and maintaining scalable design systems and workflows.
• Strong proficiency with Figma, Jira, Confluence, Notion, or other collaboration and documentation platforms.
• Proven ability to partner with cross‑functional teams including design, engineering, product, and content.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills able to drive clarity and consensus across teams.
• Ability to define and measure success metrics for design operations.
• A structured and empathetic approach to leadership balancing people, process, and outcomes.
• Fluent in Arabic and English.