Senior Design Manager

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Senior Design Manager

Company: Manychat

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Job Type: Full-Time

Category: Design Leadership / Experience-Led Growth (ELG)

Date Posted: 2026-02-05T14:58:15

Experience Level: 10+ Years

Remote Status: Hybrid

🚀 Role Summary

• Lead the end-to-end design vision for Experience-Led Growth (ELG) initiatives, focusing on user activation, expansion, and monetization within the Manychat platform.

• Drive a human-centered design approach, deeply understanding user behaviors, motivations, and pain points to create intuitive and delightful experiences that align with business objectives.

• Foster a culture of innovation, creativity, and collaboration within the growth design team and across cross-functional departments including product and engineering.

• Champion data-informed design practices, utilizing experimentation systems (e.g., A/B testing) and UX metrics to identify areas for continuous optimization and growth.

• Develop and mentor a world-class design talent pool through strategic hiring, professional development, and fostering a supportive team environment.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role is positioned within the "Experience-Led Growth (ELG)" domain, indicating a strong focus on optimizing the user journey for activation, retention, and monetization. The "Senior" title and 10+ years of experience suggest a strategic leadership role with significant autonomy and impact on product direction. The mention of "hybrid format" and "remote onboarding" points to a flexible work environment.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Own the complete design process for ELG initiatives, from opportunity identification and discovery through ideation, implementation, and delivery.

• Guide creators, agencies, and marketing experts through their user journey, ensuring seamless activation, expansion, and monetization experiences.

• Build strong partnerships with engineering and product leadership to align design strategy with overall business and product goals.

• Lead strategic exploration initiatives to identify and de-risk high-impact experience opportunities with significant growth potential.

• Oversee comprehensive research and discovery initiatives, collaborating with product and marketing teams to ensure informed decision-making across the product ecosystem.

• Ensure design deliverables consistently meet user needs while driving measurable business impact, acting as an ambassador for design excellence.

• Cultivate an environment where innovation, creativity, and collaboration thrive, both within the immediate team and across the organization.

• Effectively balance strategic leadership with hands-on design contributions, providing mentorship and sharing expertise as needed.

• Build and develop world-class design talent through strategic hiring and continuous team development.

• Drive compound UX metrics related to activation, retention, and feature adoption to identify areas for improvement and continuous optimization.

• Uncover user journey friction points and remove them through thoughtful design interventions to increase platform activation and expansion.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities highlight a blend of strategic leadership, hands-on design execution, team management, and cross-functional collaboration. Emphasis is placed on "Experience-Led Growth (ELG)," "activation," "monetization," "data-informed design," and "user journey optimization," indicating a focus on growth metrics and user lifecycle management.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: While no specific degree is listed, a strong educational foundation in Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Psychology, or a related field is implied by the experience and responsibilities. Candidates are expected to demonstrate a deep understanding of design principles and user behavior.

Experience:

• 10+ years of experience in product design.

• At least 4 years of experience leading cross-functional teams in Experience-Led Growth (ELG) or growth environments.

• Proven experience leading and managing remote/hybrid design teams successfully in tech start-ups and scale-up contexts.

Required Skills:

• Deep fluency in user behavior, product psychology, and lifecycle design.

• Strong systems thinking and information architecture skills.

• Expertise in design patterns for multi-channel, component-based environments.

• Proven ability to balance fast iteration with long-term design quality.

• Experience in developing a vision for the holistic growth experience.

• Ability to continuously optimize shipped experiences while addressing UX debt.

• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills to articulate strategic design decisions.

• Leadership skills to lead a culture of innovation.

• Experience nurturing and coaching designers for professional growth.

Preferred Skills:

• Solid understanding of computational principles (e.g., data structures).

• Familiarity with automation concepts and automation workflows.

📝 Enhancement Note: The requirements emphasize a blend of deep design expertise in growth-focused areas, leadership and team management capabilities, and strategic thinking. The "nice to have" skills indicate a potential advantage for candidates with a technical or automation background, aligning with Manychat's platform capabilities. The portfolio requirement is crucial for demonstrating practical application of these skills.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• A strong portfolio showcasing growth-driving product work, with a particular emphasis on examples related to onboarding, activation, and retention strategies.

• Demonstrations of how design decisions directly contributed to measurable business outcomes such as increased user activation, engagement, or monetization.

• Case studies detailing the end-to-end design process, from initial problem identification and user research to solution implementation and iteration.

• Examples of experience strategy development and how it was translated into tangible product features or user flows.

Process Documentation:

• Showcase experience in leading comprehensive research and discovery initiatives, including methodologies used and key insights generated.

• Detail experience with experimentation systems and frameworks, such as A/B testing, and how results informed design iterations.

• Present examples of systems thinking and information architecture applied to multi-channel, component-based environments.

• Illustrate the process of balancing fast iteration with long-term design quality, including strategies for managing UX debt.

📝 Enhancement Note: A robust portfolio is critical for this role. It should not only display design craft but also tangible evidence of driving business growth through product design. Candidates should be prepared to articulate their process for research, ideation, implementation, and measurement, particularly in the context of ELG.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: Given the "Senior" title, 10+ years of experience, and location in Barcelona, Spain, a competitive salary is expected. While not specified, similar Senior Design Manager roles in tech companies in major European cities typically range from €70,000 to €100,000+ annually, depending on experience, specific skills, and the company's compensation strategy.

Benefits:

• Remote onboarding and probation period for candidates outside of Barcelona.

• Relocation support for you and your family.

• Professional development budget for relevant conference tickets, training programs, or courses.

• Flexible benefits plan to customize your own perks.

• Comprehensive health insurance for you, your partner, and your kids.

• Free meals and snacks in the office.

• Hybrid work format (split time between home and WeWork spaces).

Working Hours: While not explicitly stated, a full-time role (likely 40 hours per week) is implied. The hybrid format suggests flexibility in daily schedules, with core collaboration hours expected.

📝 Enhancement Note: The salary estimate is based on industry benchmarks for senior design leadership roles in major European tech hubs. The benefits package is comprehensive, with a strong emphasis on supporting remote employees and professional growth. The hybrid model indicates a focus on work-life balance and collaborative flexibility.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Chat Marketing Platform / SaaS (Software as a Service)

Company Size: The description mentions "230+ teammates," indicating a growing scale-up environment. This size offers a balance between the agility of a startup and the structure of a more established company, providing opportunities for significant impact.

Founded: While the founding date isn't provided, Manychat is described as a "leading Chat Marketing platform" and an "official Meta Business Partner," suggesting a mature and well-established company within its niche.

Team Structure:

• The Senior Design Manager reports directly to the Head of Product Design.

• They will build strong partnerships with engineering and product leadership.

• They will lead and mentor a "growth design team," implying a specialized group focused on ELG initiatives.

Methodology:

• Data-Informed Design: A strong emphasis on using data, metrics, and experimentation (like A/B testing) to guide design decisions and measure impact.

• Human-Centered Design: Deep understanding of user behaviors, motivations, and pain points to create intuitive and delightful experiences.

• Experience-Led Growth (ELG): A strategic approach focused on optimizing the entire user journey for activation, engagement, retention, and monetization.

• Systems Thinking: Applying a holistic view to understand how different components of the product and user journey interact.

• Collaboration: Working closely with Product, Engineering, and Marketing teams to achieve shared goals.

Company Website: https://manychat.com/

📝 Enhancement Note: Manychat operates in the dynamic SaaS space, focusing on chat marketing. The company culture appears to be growth-oriented, collaborative, and data-driven, with a deliberate focus on user experience as a driver of business success. The matrix organization structure means strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills are paramount.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This role represents a Senior-level individual contributor with significant leadership responsibilities. It sits at the intersection of design craft, product strategy, and business growth, making it a critical position within the product organization. It requires not just design expertise but also the ability to influence product direction and mentor other designers.

Reporting Structure: The role reports directly to the Head of Product Design. This suggests a clear path for mentorship, strategic alignment, and career development within the design leadership team. Collaboration will be essential with Product Managers and Engineering Leads.

Operations Impact: The Senior Design Manager will have a direct and significant impact on Manychat's revenue and business decisions by owning the Experience-Led Growth (ELG) strategy. Optimizing user activation, retention, and monetization through design directly translates to increased customer acquisition, lifetime value, and overall platform growth. Their work will be measured by key business metrics.

Growth Opportunities:

• Leadership Advancement: Potential to grow into a Director-level role or lead larger, more specialized design teams within Manychat.

• Strategic Influence: Opportunity to shape the long-term product strategy and design philosophy for critical growth areas of the platform.

• Skill Specialization: Deepen expertise in Experience-Led Growth, user psychology, experimentation, and managing remote/hybrid teams.

• Industry Recognition: Contributing to a leading Chat Marketing platform can build a strong professional reputation.

• Professional Development: Access to a dedicated budget for training, conferences, and courses to continuously enhance skills.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role offers a clear path for career advancement within a growing tech company, focusing on leadership, strategic impact, and specialized skill development in the crucial area of growth design. The reporting structure to the Head of Product Design provides a solid foundation for mentorship and career progression.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: The company utilizes WeWork spaces, suggesting a modern, flexible co-working environment that facilitates collaboration and provides professional amenities. This is complemented by a hybrid work arrangement.

Office Location(s): The primary office location is Barcelona, Spain. The role also supports remote onboarding and probation for candidates outside of Barcelona, indicating a distributed team structure with a central hub.

Workspace Context:

• Collaborative Environment: WeWork spaces are designed to foster interaction and provide a professional setting for team meetings and focused work. The hybrid model allows for a balance between focused remote work and in-person collaboration.

• Operations Tools & Technology: Access to standard professional design software and collaboration tools, likely including Figma, and project management platforms. The emphasis on experimentation and data will require proficiency with analytics and A/B testing tools.

• Team Interaction: Opportunities for regular interaction with the growth design team, product management, engineering, and other cross-functional stakeholders, both virtually and in person.

Work Schedule: A hybrid work schedule is offered, allowing employees to split their time between home and office spaces. While specific daily hours may be flexible, core working hours will likely be established to ensure effective collaboration, especially within the European time zone.

📝 Enhancement Note: The hybrid model, utilizing WeWork spaces, provides flexibility and a professional collaborative environment. This setup is well-suited for a senior role requiring both independent work and team interaction, accommodating a distributed team while maintaining a strong company culture.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: Review of resume and portfolio to assess experience, leadership, and alignment with ELG principles.

• Hiring Manager Interview: Discussion with the Head of Product Design focusing on leadership philosophy, strategic thinking, team management, and high-level growth design concepts.

• Cross-Functional Interviews: Meetings with Product and Engineering leads to evaluate collaboration skills, understanding of technical constraints, and ability to drive cross-functional initiatives.

• Design Challenge/Portfolio Presentation: A practical exercise or in-depth presentation of past work, focusing on how candidates have driven growth through design, their problem-solving methodology, and ability to articulate complex design decisions. This stage will heavily scrutinize the portfolio's demonstration of ELG impact.

• Final Round: Potentially with senior leadership to assess cultural fit, strategic vision, and long-term potential.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Highlight ELG Impact: Clearly articulate how your design work has directly contributed to key growth metrics (activation, retention, monetization). Use data and metrics to support your claims.

• Showcase Process: Detail your approach to research, ideation, experimentation (A/B testing), and iteration for growth initiatives.

• Demonstrate Leadership: Include examples of how you've mentored designers, led cross-functional teams, and influenced product strategy.

• Tell a Story: Structure your case studies to clearly define the problem, your role, the solutions you designed, and the measurable outcomes.

• Address UX Debt: Explain how you balance rapid iteration with maintaining design quality and addressing technical debt for long-term product health.

• Systems Thinking: Showcase your ability to design for complex, multi-channel environments and component-based systems.

Challenge Preparation:

• Be ready to discuss specific strategies for improving user activation and retention within a SaaS platform.

• Prepare to articulate your approach to leading a design team in a hybrid/remote setting.

• Anticipate questions about balancing strategic vision with hands-on execution and managing multiple priorities.

• Understand Manychat's product and target audience to tailor your responses and case studies.

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview process will heavily scrutinize the candidate's ability to demonstrate tangible growth impact through design. A well-curated portfolio that clearly links design efforts to business outcomes, coupled with strong leadership and strategic communication skills, will be key to success.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Design & Prototyping: Figma (highly probable for collaborative design, component libraries, and prototyping), Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite.

• Research & Discovery: User testing platforms (e.g., UserTesting.com, Maze), survey tools (e.g., SurveyMonkey, Typeform), analytics platforms for user behavior analysis.

• Collaboration & Project Management: Jira, Asana, Trello, Notion, Slack, Confluence.

Analytics & Reporting:

• Product Analytics: Amplitude, Mixpanel, Google Analytics (for user behavior, feature adoption, funnel analysis).

• Experimentation Platforms: Optimizely, VWO, Google Optimize (for A/B testing and multivariate testing).

• BI Tools: Tableau, Power BI, Looker (for visualizing data and reporting on key metrics).

CRM & Automation:

• CRM: While not explicitly mentioned for the design team, understanding the principles of CRM (like Salesforce) that Manychat's clients use would be beneficial.

• Automation Concepts: Familiarity with automation workflows and computational principles is a "nice to have," indicating an appreciation for how the platform functions and how design can integrate with automated processes.

📝 Enhancement Note: Proficiency with modern collaborative design tools (especially Figma) is essential. A strong understanding of product analytics and experimentation platforms is critical for driving data-informed growth design. Familiarity with automation concepts is a plus, aligning with Manychat's core offering.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• Growth Mindset: A continuous drive for improvement, embracing challenges, and learning from both successes and failures to achieve business objectives.

• User-Centricity: Placing the user at the forefront of all design decisions, aiming to solve their problems effectively and create delightful experiences.

• Collaboration & Transparency: Fostering open communication and teamwork across departments to ensure alignment and shared success.

• Excellence & Craftsmanship: Upholding high standards for design quality, attention to detail, and impactful solutions.

• Innovation & Creativity: Encouraging new ideas and approaches to problem-solving that push boundaries and drive product evolution.

Collaboration Style:

• Cross-functional Integration: Working closely with Product Management and Engineering to translate user needs and business goals into actionable design solutions.

• Data-Driven Decision Making: A culture where design decisions are informed by user research, analytics, and experimentation results.

• Mentorship & Knowledge Sharing: An environment where team members are encouraged to share their expertise, provide constructive feedback, and support each other's professional development.

• Agile & Iterative: Embracing an iterative approach to design, allowing for rapid prototyping, testing, and refinement based on feedback and data.

📝 Enhancement Note: The company culture emphasizes growth, user focus, and strong collaboration. The "matrix organization" implies a need for excellent communication and influence skills to navigate different stakeholder priorities effectively. A proactive and learning-oriented approach will be highly valued.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Balancing Speed and Quality: Effectively managing the demands of fast-paced iteration for growth initiatives while maintaining long-term design quality and addressing UX debt.

• Cross-functional Alignment: Navigating a matrix organization to ensure consistent vision and execution across product, engineering, and marketing teams.

• Defining and Measuring Growth: Establishing clear, compound UX metrics for activation, retention, and monetization, and effectively tracking their improvement through design interventions.

• Leading Remote/Hybrid Teams: Cultivating a cohesive and high-performing design team within a distributed work environment.

• Staying Ahead of Trends: Keeping pace with evolving user expectations and technological advancements in the chat marketing and SaaS space.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Strategic Design Leadership: Developing advanced skills in product strategy, market analysis, and influencing executive-level decisions.

• Growth Hacking through Design: Deepening expertise in specific growth tactics and how design can maximally leverage them (e.g., onboarding optimization, viral loops, retention mechanics).

• Team Building & Mentorship: Honing skills in hiring, coaching, and developing high-performing design talent.

• Data Science & Analytics: Enhancing understanding of data analysis, experimentation design, and interpreting complex user behavior metrics.

• Product Ecosystem Expansion: Gaining exposure to broader product challenges and opportunities within the Manychat platform.

📝 Enhancement Note: The role offers significant opportunities to tackle complex growth challenges and develop leadership skills in a dynamic tech environment. The company's investment in professional development budgets further supports continuous learning and skill enhancement.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "Describe your approach to defining and owning the end-to-end design vision for Experience-Led Growth initiatives. How do you ensure alignment with business objectives?"

  • Preparation: Prepare to discuss your framework for ELG, including stages of user journey mapping, opportunity identification, and how you translate strategy into actionable design plans.

• "How do you balance fast iteration for growth experiments with maintaining long-term design quality and addressing UX debt? Can you provide an example?"

  • Preparation: Detail your methodologies for managing the design backlog, prioritizing UX improvements alongside feature development, and your philosophy on technical debt in design.

• "Walk me through a challenging cross-functional collaboration where you had to align multiple stakeholders on a complex design decision. What was your strategy, and what was the outcome?"

  • Preparation: Be ready to share a specific case study demonstrating your communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills, particularly within a matrix organization.

Company & Culture Questions:

• "What excites you about Manychat and our mission in the chat marketing space?"

  • Preparation: Research Manychat's product, target audience, and recent news. Understand the value proposition of chat marketing.

• "How would you foster a culture of innovation and collaboration within a remote/hybrid growth design team?"

  • Preparation: Discuss strategies for virtual team building, asynchronous communication best practices, and creating psychological safety for creative ideation.

• "How do you leverage data and user research to inform your design decisions, particularly in driving activation and retention?"

  • Preparation: Provide specific examples of how you've used metrics (e.g., activation rates, churn, feature adoption) and user feedback to iterate on designs and achieve measurable results.

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Structure Your Narrative: For each case study, clearly define the problem, your specific role and contributions, the design process followed, the key decisions made, and the quantifiable results achieved (e.g., % increase in activation, % reduction in churn).

• Emphasize ELG Impact: Focus on how your designs directly contributed to user activation, expansion, or monetization. Quantify this impact with data.

• Showcase Leadership: Highlight instances where you mentored designers, led team efforts, or influenced product strategy.

• Be Ready for Deep Dives: Anticipate questions about your design choices, trade-offs made, challenges encountered, and how you would approach similar problems differently.

• Focus on Process & Rationale: Clearly articulate why you made certain design decisions, linking them back to user needs, business goals, and data insights.

📝 Enhancement Note: Preparation should focus on demonstrating a deep understanding of Experience-Led Growth, strong leadership capabilities, and a data-driven approach to design. The portfolio presentation is a critical opportunity to showcase practical application of these skills with measurable results.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Senior Design Manager position:

• Submit your application through the provided link on the Greenhouse job board.

• Portfolio Customization: Tailor your portfolio to prominently feature case studies related to user activation, retention, and monetization within a SaaS or growth-focused context. Emphasize your leadership experience and the measurable business impact of your design work.

• Resume Optimization: Highlight keywords such as "Experience-Led Growth (ELG)," "Design Leadership," "Information Architecture," "Service Design," "User Behavior," "A/B Testing," "Cross-functional Collaboration," and "Team Management." Quantify your achievements with specific metrics.

• Interview Preparation: Practice articulating your design process, leadership philosophy, and experience with data-informed growth strategies. Prepare to discuss your approach to building and mentoring design teams in a hybrid/remote environment.

• Company Research: Deeply understand Manychat's platform, target audience, and business objectives. Familiarize yourself with their current product offerings and any recent company news or initiatives related to growth.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details, particularly regarding salary ranges and specific interview processes, should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.