Staff Design Program Manager

LinkedIn • Mountain View, CA

1d • $139,000 - $229,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

This role is based in Sunnyvale. As a Staff Design Program Manager (DPM), you will join the Premium Design Team—one of LinkedIn’s fastest-growing and most strategic businesses. Premium is a member-first subscription and a top company priority, delivering meaningful value to professionals worldwide. Embedded within the Consumer Product team, you will drive large-scale, complex programs in a highly horizontal, matrixed environment. Premium sits at the center of LinkedIn’s ecosystem, requiring deep partnership across all pillar teams. You will influence without authority, align senior cross-functional leaders, and bring clarity to ambiguous, multi-team problem spaces to deliver cohesive, end-to-end member experiences. You will establish scalable operating models, drive executive-ready narratives, proactively manage cross-pillar dependencies, and balance member impact, technical feasibility, and business outcomes. This role requires strong strategic thinking, organizational leadership, and the ability to create durable impact beyond a single team. Partnering closely with the Director of Premium Design, you’ll enable designers to focus on craft while raising the bar on execution at scale. Demonstrated AI fluency and interest in building AI-powered products are a strong plus. Learn more about our design community at design.linkedin.com #LinkedInDesign

Requirements

• BA/BS degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years in design program management, design operations, design management, product management, or other relevant experience.
• Experienced understanding of the end-to-end product design process, including discovery, UXR, prototyping, testing, and implementation.

Nice To Haves

• Experience working with a large internal design team, including product design, user research, content design, design operations.
• Experience coaching peers and supporting design culture and hiring efforts.
• Comfort leveraging AI-powered tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, design and productivity tools) to streamline workflows, improve clarity, and increase program efficiency.
• Ability to distinguish critical from non-critical issues and set team focus and priorities accordingly.
• The ability to break down issues to key fundamentals and drive the team toward action.
• Experience brainstorming and leading team-building events in partnership with design leadership.
• An ability to organize cross-functional activities into a complete plan, recognizing interdependence, and establishing a framework for the team to build out the plan and mentoring the execution of that plan.
• Ability to coach others and champion member value.
• Ability to handle ambiguity, set goals and effectively deliver to them if project plans shift and need to adapt.

Responsibilities

• Strengthen and scale the design organization’s operating model, improving creative workflows and establishing mechanisms (e.g., implementation reviews) that elevate execution rigor and end-to-end quality.
• Build and leverage strategic relationships across design, product, engineering, research, and program management to drive alignment and accelerate decision-making in a highly matrixed environment.
• Own and drive high-visibility horizontal and cross-functional programs across pillar teams, aligning senior stakeholders and delivering cohesive, ecosystem-level impact.
• Lead complex, ambiguous, multi-pillar initiatives, influencing without authority and proactively managing enterprise-level dependencies and trade-offs.
• Partner with design leadership on portfolio planning, prioritization, and resource strategy to ensure focus and clarity at scale.
• Communicate program vision, risks, and outcomes to executives and cross-functional leaders, balancing member impact, technical feasibility, and business goals.
• Drive community-building and knowledge-sharing initiatives that institutionalize best practices and elevate craft, consistency, and shared ways of working.

Benefits

• Actual compensation packages are based on a wide array of factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, years & depth of experience, certifications and specific office location.
• This may differ in other locations due to cost of labor considerations.
• The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans.
• For additional information, visit: https://careers.linkedin.com/benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level