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Design Operations Manager

Design & Media

Design Operations Managers (DesignOps) are the infrastructure layer of a design org — they own the systems, rituals, tooling, and hiring pipelines that let designers do their best work at scale. At a 20-person design team, DesignOps is one person juggling Figma library governance, onboarding runbooks, and vendor contracts; at a 200-person org (Flipkart, PhonePe, Zomato, Swiggy), it's a team owning design system adoption metrics, research ops, hiring programmes, and cross-functional process design. The role is neither pure design nor pure program management — it demands deep design fluency to earn credibility with designers, plus the operational rigour to build systems that outlast any single person. In India, the DesignOps title appeared in earnest at product unicorns around 2021-2022 and has been growing steadily as design org headcount crossed thresholds where informal coordination visibly breaks down.