UI/UX Design Manager

Job title: UI UX Design Manager

Department: Design

Location: Vashi, Navi Mumbai (On-site)

Working days and Hours: Monday – Friday, standard office hours

Experience Required: 6+ years (with at least 3 years in a design-management role)

CTC Range: ₹11–12 LPA, based on experience, team-leadership track record, and design strategy depth

Employment Type: Full-time

Reports To: Founder & CEO

Manages: A team of 5–8 designers, including the Senior UI/UX Design Lead

About [REDACTED]

[REDACTED] is an AI-native technology company building a portfolio of AI-driven SaaS products. Design is central to how these products are understood, trusted, and adopted — across our brands and our users. This role owns the design function end-to-end.

About the Role

We are looking for a UI/UX Design Manager to own the design function across [REDACTED]’s product portfolio. This is the senior-most design seat in the organization. You will set design strategy across products, manage a team of 5–8 designers (including a Senior Design Lead who owns hands-on senior craft beneath you), run design across 7–8 concurrent projects, and be the design counterpart to product and engineering leadership. Reporting directly to the CEO, you are accountable for the shipped design of everything we ship. This is a management role, not primarily a hands-on IC role. You are the strategist, the reviewer, and the leader of the function. Hands-on senior craft sits with the Design Lead beneath you; your job is to set direction, hold the bar, grow the team, and represent design at the leadership table. That said, at this stage of the company you will still design directly on the highest-impact work when required — particularly on strategic explorations, new-product launches, and cross-brand systems. Prior experience in an IT / SaaS / product company is non-negotiable. Prior experience genuinely managing a design team of 5+ is non-negotiable. This is a role for someone who has already done this work before, not someone stepping up into it for the first time. You will report directly to the CEO.

Key Responsibilities

Design Strategy & Direction

• Own the design vision and strategy across the SaaS portfolio.
• Set priorities across 7–8 concurrent projects; make trade-offs when everything can’t be built.
• Represent design at the leadership table — product, engineering, and CEO reviews.
• Own release-readiness and cross-product design decisions.

Team Management

• Manage a team of 5–8 designers, including the Senior UI/UX Design Lead as your direct report.
• Set clear expectations, run 1:1s and reviews, and own performance conversations end-to-end.
• Grow the team’s craft, career depth, and independence over time.
• Own hiring for the design team — who joins, at what level, and how they ramp up.

Quality Bar & Review

• Define and hold the design quality bar across the whole team.
• Review the Design Lead’s work and the wider team’s work; catch issues before ship.
• Own design systems, brand-design consistency, and cross-product coherence.
• Set the standard through your own review — not by out-designing the team.

Cross-Team Leadership

• Partner with product management and engineering leadership on roadmap, scope, and trade-offs.
• Represent design to the CEO and the wider org clearly — what’s being built, why, and what’s at risk.
• Communicate design decisions to non-design stakeholders in business terms, not just design terms.
• Coordinate with Brand / Marketing and the graphic-design function so brand and product visual languages stay aligned.

Hands-On Design (Selective)

• Personally own strategic design work on the highest-impact / most-critical launches.
• Design directly on cross-brand systems, new-product launches, and executive-visibility work.
• Delegate day-to-day craft work to the Lead and the team — stay in strategy and review mode by default.

Required Skills & Experience

• Experience: 6+ years in UI/UX design, with at least 3 years in a design-management role
• Team management (must-have, non-negotiable): proven experience managing a design team of 5+ — real people-management with 1:1s, reviews, hiring, and performance calls; not just informal mentoring
• IT / technology company background (must-have, non-negotiable): prior experience designing for and inside a technology / SaaS / IT product company
• UI depth (must-have): senior-level UI craft — visual design systems, interaction patterns, component libraries, responsive design
• UX depth (must-have): senior-level UX craft — research, flows, information architecture, usability, and design decisions grounded in user reality
• Design strategy (must-have): genuine experience setting design direction across multiple products or product lines
• Multi-project (must-have): proven ability to run design across 7–8 concurrent projects without dropping quality
• [REDACTED]: advanced [REDACTED] — components, variants, Auto-Layout, plugins, libraries
• AI-tools fluency: current, hands-on with AI design tools; adopted in real work, not just tried
• Communication: clear, senior communicator; can represent design to the CEO and cross-functional leadership
• Portfolio: senior-level portfolio required; must include team-led work and design-strategy examples, not just personal craft

Nice to Have

• Prior experience building or scaling a design function from small to mid-size.
• Experience designing for AI / ML / non-deterministic product surfaces.
• Exposure to design ops — systems, documentation, and workflow tooling.
• Experience working across multiple brands / product lines within one company.
• Formal design education or equivalent professional depth.

The Ideal Candidate

• Has genuinely managed a design team of 5+, and can point to what specifically improved under their leadership.
• Has worked inside a technology / SaaS / IT product company — not as an agency contractor — for a meaningful part of their career.
• Is strong across both UI and UX — not stronger on one at the expense of the other.
• Can balance strategy, review, team management, and selective hands-on work.
• Communicates well with the CEO and leadership; represents design as a business function, not a purely creative one.
• Runs a design function with process and craft, not chaos and heroics.

Portfolio Requirement

A senior-level portfolio is mandatory. We want to see two things clearly:

1. your own personal design work at senior IC level, and
2. work led through a team — what your team shipped, what your role was, and what changed under your leadership.

Applications with only personal-craft portfolios and no team-led work will not clear the preliminary round.

Hiring Process

Our process is designed to assess design strategy, real management ability, and communication:

• Preliminary portfolio review — a senior portfolio with team-led work is required to move forward.
• HR conversation — initial screen for fit, background, and communication.
• Design strategy conversation — with senior leadership on design direction, decisions, and philosophy.
• Practical design exercise — a short, role-relevant strategy / review task; you walk us through your thinking.
• Panel discussion — with product, engineering, and cross-functional stakeholders on collaboration and leadership.
• Final round with the CEO — a conversation on leadership, design ownership, and how you’d run the function.

Why Join [REDACTED]

• Own the design function at a fast-growing AI-native SaaS company.
• Report directly to the CEO — close to the decisions, no layers of middle management.
• Build the design function as the products and team scale.
• Broad scope: product UI/UX, design systems, brand consistency, cross-brand coherence.
• Collaborative environment with Provident Fund and employee benefits.

How to Apply

Apply here: [REDACTED]

Steps to complete the application & AI interview round:

• Click on the link above.
• Read through the job description thoroughly and click "Apply."
• Enter basic details to complete registration.
• After registering, click the button to start the interview.
• Candidates may skip the mock AI round and proceed directly to the actual assessment.
• Ensure camera and microphone are working properly before starting.