Design Operations Lead
Role Overview
The Design Operations Lead establishes and operates a scalable design capability for Technology Enablement.
This role serves as the operational owner of the design capability, with accountability for design quality, tooling, workflows, standards, intake, resource planning, and delivery across reports, portals, and other digital experiences.
The Design Operations Lead owns the permanent design capability required to support and evolve FMI's products and experiences while enabling specialized design capacity to scale with initiative demand. The role directs and coordinates internal and external design resources to deliver the majority of design work, while providing targeted hands-on support for baseline design needs, maintaining critical design assets and standards, and determining when additional UX, UI, research, accessibility, service design, or other expertise is required.
A key responsibility is continually improving how design work gets done.
The Lead owns the design toolchain and working environment, including Figma organization and governance, Adobe InDesign report-design and production workflows, reusable templates and libraries, project and asset organization, documentation, versioning, and design-to-development handoff practices.
The Lead identifies gaps in existing tooling and processes and implements more effective approaches that improve design quality, efficiency, maintainability, and collaboration.
Key Skills for This Role
Full Job Posting
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead the overall design operations capability, establishing the operating model, priorities, standards and governance for how design work is delivered
- Provide oversight of the design portfolio, including intake, prioritization, resource allocation, quality and delivery across digital experiences
- Lead and coordinate internal and external design resources, providing direction and ensuring consistent execution against established design standards
- Serve as hands-on practitioner for Technology Enablement, directly executing baseline design and production work across FMI reports, portals, and related digital experiences while engaging specialized expertise when demand or complexity requires it
- Own and continuously improve the design toolchain, standards, and working environment, including Figma governance, fit-for-purpose report and PDF design tooling, reusable components and templates, and clear project, file, asset, and documentation practices
- Partner with Product Management and cross-functional stakeholders to translate product and business needs into effective design outcomes, define the appropriate design approach, and ensure work is aligned to product strategy, priorities, and delivery plans
- Establish clear design-to-development handoff practices so work is organized, documented, technically actionable, and maintainable; partner with Engineering during implementation as needed and support design quality assurance of delivered experiences
- Forecast design demand and capacity, identifying upcoming resource needs and when initiative-funded or specialized resources are required
- Ensure work delivered by internal specialists, consultants, agencies and other partners transitions cleanly into ongoing stewardship, including reusable assets, documentation, and key design decisions
- Facilitate design reviews and decision forums; uphold consistent, human-centered, accessible, and high-quality design practices across reports, portals, and other digital experiences
- Define meaningful measures for the design capability and continuously improve its tools, workflows, quality, capacity, and delivery effectiveness
- Other duties as assigned
- Comply with FMI's attendance policies
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in design, human-computer interaction, human factors, information design, product design, graphic design, a related discipline, or equivalent relevant professional experience
- 8+ years of professional experience in product design, experience design, UI/UX design, design operations, or a related discipline
- Demonstrated experience as a hands-on senior designer, with a portfolio or equivalent work examples showing strong visual and interaction design craft, systems thinking, and production-quality digital experiences
- Advanced proficiency with Figma and strong experience with professional report and document design tooling, including Adobe InDesign; experience establishing reusable templates, libraries, and well-organized design assets
- Demonstrated experience working cross-functionally in a product environment and establishing effective workflows from design through engineering handoff, implementation, and quality review
- Demonstrated ability to independently frame ambiguous design needs, establish practical standards and workflows, organize complex work, and balance hands-on execution with orchestration of additional design expertise
- 3+ years of direct experience in the life science, biomedical, biopharma, and/or health care industries designing data-driven applications, systems, and services
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience operating or contributing to a Design Operations, DesignOps, design services, or similarly centralized design capability
- Experience with reports, data-rich applications, customer or provider portals, enterprise software, or other information-dense experiences, including strong typography, information hierarchy, and document/report design skills
- Experience with design systems, reusable component libraries, accessibility standards, project and asset organization, and design quality governance
- Experience with design intake, demand forecasting, capacity planning, and work delivered through a mix of internal contributors, consultants, agencies, or other external partners
- Working knowledge of modern product development and component-based front-end environments, including tools or practices that support design-to-development collaboration and handoff
- Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder-management skills, with an understanding of HIPAA and patient data privacy
- Understanding of HIPAA and the importance of patient data privacy
- Commitment to reflect FMI’s values: Integrity, Courage, and Passion
- The expected salary range for this position based on the primary location of Boston, MA is $152,160 - $190,200 per year. The salary range is commensurate with Foundation Medicines compensation practice and considers factors including, but not limited to, education, training, experience, external market conditions, criticality of role, and internal equity. A discretionary annual bonus may be available based on individual and Company performance. This position also qualifies for Foundation Medicine's benefits.
- #LI-Hybrid
About Sales and Customer Experience
Foundation Medicine is a precision-medicine company developing genomic diagnostic tests for cancer patients, clinicians, researchers, and biopharma companies.
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