Design Program Manager

Everlaw; Oakland, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 178,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

Flexible Spending Accounts

Equity

Job summary

Everlaw in Oakland, CA is seeking a Design Program Manager to establish the operating system for our product design team. You’ll reduce friction, align stakeholders, and ensure high-quality, accessible AI-powered litigation tools.

You’ll shape the design operating model, manage capacity, and partner across Design, PM, Eng, Research, and Writing to deliver complex workflows with craft and consistency. This role is hybrid in the Oakland office.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in Design Program Management or Design Operations
• Proven ability to balance priorities & steer ambiguity with structure
• Experience building lightweight design operations and resourcing processes
• Excellent storytelling to translate design progress to leadership
• Strong understanding of user-centered design and modern UX workflows
• Experience with Jira or AI design tools such as Cursor/Claude Design

Responsibilities

• Define and own design operating model for planning and delivery
• Define readiness criteria and coordinate pre-launch quality reviews
• Coordinate interfaces between Design, PM, Eng, Research, and Writing
• Build and champion lightweight operations rhythms, templates, and briefs
• Manage design resourcing and capacity tracking for staffing decisions
• Represent design work to the business with reporting on capacity and throughput

Skills

Design program mgmt

Design operations

Stakeholder mgmt

Figma

Jira

Communication

Tools

Cursor

Claude Design

Job description

The Role

As a Design Program Manager at Everlaw, you'll establish the operating system for our growing product design team, bringing structure, visibility, and predictability to how we design AI-powered litigation tools. As our first dedicated Design Program Manager, you'll absorb operational friction and cross-functional complexity so product designers can focus entirely on craft, quality, and solving complex user workflows. This is a full-time, exempt position based in our Oakland, CA office with a hybrid work schedule: in office M/W/Th with the option to work from home on Tu/Fr.

What you’ll do

• Own the design operating model for planning and delivery - define how design work is estimated, sequenced, and handed off, and maintain the system that makes dependencies and timeline risk visible before they become escalations.
• Define design readiness criteria and coordinate pre-launch quality reviews to ensure shipped features meet high standards for craft, responsiveness, accessibility, and edge cases.
• Own the working interfaces between Design, Product Management, Engineering, User Research, and Technical Writing - define how scope is agreed, how dependencies are tracked, and where conflicts get decided, so those questions have a standing answer instead of being renegotiated per project.
• Build and champion lightweight design operations rhythms, frameworks, and templates—such as design briefs and critique structures to streamline team workflows.
• Manage design resourcing and bandwidth tracking to inform staffing decisions, highlight capacity constraints, and help leadership plan for future team growth.
• Own how design's work is represented to the business - build and maintain the reporting layer (capacity, throughput, readiness) that lets product and executive leadership plan against design, rather than assembling narrative updates each cycle.

About you

• You have at least 5 years of experience in Design Program Management or Design Operations supporting product design teams in complex, enterprise B2B SaaS or data-heavy environments.
• You excel at balancing competing priorities across multiple stakeholders, steering teams through ambiguity with structure, clear prioritization, and empathy.
• You’ve built and scaled lightweight design operations frameworks, delivery plans, and resource tracking processes without stifling creative momentum.
• You bring excellent communication and storytelling skills, with a proven ability to translate design progress and complex trade-offs into business-relevant narratives for leadership.
• You bring a strong understanding of user-centered design methodologies, modern UX workflows, and tools like Figma.
• You have experience working with project tracking tools like Jira or emerging AI tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Design).
• You operate with a low-ego, highly collaborative style, finding genuine fulfillment in making design teams visible and successful.
• You are authorized to work in the United States without restrictions. Please note that at this time, Everlaw is not sponsoring F-1 visas, including OPT, for this role.

The Team — Product

The Product team shapes products used by everyone from document reviewers and corporate teams to government attorneys and law firm partners, each with distinct needs across a broad and complex domain. The team brings together user insight, market context, business priorities, design, and technical feasibility to decide what Everlaw builds and why. This work turns deeply capable technology into intuitive experiences and helps define the next era of legal work.

Total Rewards & Benefits

The expected salary range for this role is $140,000 - $178,000. Final salary depends on factors including the candidate's experience and skills, and the base pay range is subject to change. This role is also eligible for equity and the benefits below.

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Flexible Spending Accounts for health and dependent care expenses
• Membership to Modern Health to