Discord is used by over 200 million people every month for many different reasons, but there’s one thing that nearly everyone does on our platform: play video games. Over 90% of our users play games, spending a combined 1.5 billion hours playing thousands of unique titles on Discord each month. Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming. We are focused on making it easier and more fun for people to talk and hang out before, during, and after playing games.
The Engagement organization at Discord is focused on deepening user engagement and retention—ensuring that as we bring in new users, they stick around and make Discord an irreplaceable part of their daily lives. We work on Discord's core social systems: voice and messaging. Our mission is to drive repeatable mechanisms that increase engagement across both our core desktop gaming audience and emerging segments like mobile gamers.
We're looking for an experienced Product Design Manager to lead a team of designers working on one of these strategic themes. You'll manage designers tackling challenges like making voice calls more discoverable and engaging, creating social feedback loops that keep conversations going, or ensuring Discord's foundational experiences remain world-class.
As a Design Manager, you'll independently lead your team across a single domain, balancing strategic thinking with hands-on craft leadership. You'll work closely with cross-functional partners in Product and Engineering to translate Engagement's strategy into delightful user experiences, while developing your designers and maintaining Discord's high quality bar.
What You'll Be Doing
- Develop a team of highly-engaged designers by coaching and instilling a sense of ownership and impact.
- Provide direction and guidance of product designers' output, promote partnerships and design process.
- Build close bonds with your corresponding engineering and product management leaders to influence product strategy and ensure world-class product execution.
- Partner with Staff+ designers and XFN partners to define and refine the design portions of the roadmap, ensuring work is appropriately broken down and prioritized.
- Set a strong pace for the team and foster a culture of quality by balancing holistic thinking with feature impact, cutting scope when needed without compromising quality.
- Make sound first-principle decisions around resourcing and team composition, adapting to changing needs or tuning team dynamics.
- Drive design excellence within your team and owned systems; mentor designers on user-centric thinking and risk mitigation.
- Occasionally be hands-on with design work, pitching in to support your team and keep them focused on deeper work—however this is primarily a management role.
What you should have
- 2+ years of experience as a Design Manager and/or have led at least 2 Product Designers previously within a design team.
- 6+ years experience in multi-platform digital products as a Product Designer (or similar role). Especially fluent with mobile product development and consumer products, with experience using prototyping tools to demonstrate product concepts.
- A portfolio of work you've designed and shipped as well as examples of work you directed delivered by your team. Examples of how you have previously influenced your product teams, organizations or discipline.
- An enjoyment of people leadership. This includes recruiting, training and developing, organization design, and leading by example.
- Strong eye for craft. You can identify when work can benefit from more time or investment, identifying gaps in visual or interaction design.
- History of strong partnerships with engineering and product management leadership.
- You thrive in ambiguous environments and get excited about figuring out strategies or processes to address them—both in product and internal team structures.
- You are a first principles thinker that can work with others to come up with pragmatic solutions.
- Designing yourself does not scare you, and you're happy to jump in to help if needed. You are still a designer even if you don't do it all the time.
The US base salary range for this full-time position is $220,000 to $247,500 + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role and level. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include equity, or benefits.
Why Discord?
Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming. We're a multiplatform, multigenerational and multiplayer platform that helps people deepen their friendships around games and shared interests. We believe games give us a way to have fun with our favorite people, whether listening to music together or grinding in competitive matches for diamond rank. Join us in our mission! Your future is just a click away!
Discord is committed to inclusion and providing reasonable accommodations during the interview process. We want you to feel set up for success, so if you are in need of reasonable accommodations, please let your recruiter know.
Please see our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy for details regarding Discord’s collection and usage of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking HERE.
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