Senior Manager, Product Design

At Compass, our mission is to help everyone find their place in the world. Founded in 2012, we’re revolutionizing the real estate industry with our end-to-end platform that empowers residential real estate agents to deliver exceptional service to seller and buyer clients.

Who We're Looking For

We are seeking an experienced, strategic, and operationally rigorous Senior Design Manager to lead the product design team dedicated to our consumer experience. In this role, you will define and execute the end-to-end consumer journey across compass.com and the Compass consumer mobile app (iOS and Android), reaching millions of home browsers, buyers, and sellers.

Reporting to a Senior Director of Product Design, you will oversee a talented team of product designers while serving as a strategic peer to Engineering and Product Management leaders. You will bridge high-level vision and tactical execution—balancing world-class visual craft, user research, and interaction design with disciplined project resourcing, milestone tracking, and stakeholder management. As a Senior Design Manager, your orientation spans across (driving strategic cross-functional alignment and shared roadmaps with Consumer EPD partners), down (mentoring talent, raising the craft bar, and operationalizing delivery), and critically up – ensuring Director, VP, and executive leadership are continually aligned on design strategy, milestones, and customer outcomes. You excel in a fast-paced organization, maintaining clarity and momentum while ensuring that critical consumer initiatives are thoroughly vetted, tracked, and reviewed across all levels of leadership.

Responsibilities

Consumer Experience Leadership (Web & Mobile): Lead the design vision and execution for consumer touchpoints, including compass.com and the Compass iOS/Android native mobile apps. Drive cohesive, modern, and high-converting discovery, search, listing exploration, and decision-making experiences across platforms.

Upward Alignment & Executive Governance: Drive continuous, high-visibility alignment with senior leadership. Confidently interface with and present to Directors, VPs, and executive stakeholders, framing design challenges around business value and customer outcomes. Ensure executive feedback is rapidly synthesized and integrated into team priorities.

Operational Diligence & Timeline Tracking: Drive rigorous operational discipline across all design workstreams. Proactively scope and resource projects, manage capacity, establish delivery milestones, and track project timelines in close collaboration with Product and Program Management. Ensure design commitments are met with predictability in a fast-paced, iterative environment.

People Leadership & Coaching: Manage, coach, and inspire a team of product designers (spanning mid-level to senior/staff ICs). Conduct regular 1:1s, support career growth paths, drive performance evaluations, and foster a collaborative, psychologically safe team environment. Coach designers on leading complex projects, articulating design rationale, and managing stakeholder dynamics.

Design Craft & Usability Standards: Champion an uncompromising bar for design quality. Conduct hands-on critiques and reviews to elevate visual finish, interaction polish, information architecture, accessibility, and overall usability across responsive web and native mobile interfaces.

Cross-Functional Partnership : Foster high-trust, peer-level partnerships with Product Management, Engineering, and Analytics leads. Act as a facilitative leader who aligns multi-quarter roadmaps, resolves dependencies, balances technical feasibility with customer delight, and drives shared accountability for consumer KPIs.

Systems Thinking & Multi-Platform Cohesion: Partner closely with Design Systems and Engineering teams to implement reusable component patterns and design tokens. Ensure unified brand consistency and seamless transitions between web, mobile web, and native mobile apps.

Data-Informed & Insight-Led Discovery: Champion continuous user research and data-driven iteration. Guide your team in planning qualitative usability testing, competitive benchmarking, and quantitative metrics tracking (e.g., search conversion, engagement, retention), translating insights into actionable design iterations.

Hiring & Design Org Culture: Identify team staffing needs, shape job requisitions, and partner with Talent Acquisition to recruit, interview, and close exceptional, diverse product design talent. Actively contribute to company-wide design operations, leveling frameworks, and design culture.

What You Bring

Experience: 8-10+ years of total product/UX design experience, with 2-4+ years of dedicated people management experience directly leading and developing product designers in high-growth, modern technology organizations.

Consumer Product Provenance: Demonstrated success leading design for high-traffic, consumer-facing digital products across both responsive web platforms and native mobile applications (iOS and Android) at scale.

Multi-Directional Leadership: Proven capability operating across, down, and up—effortlessly managing direct reports, collaborating across EPD disciplines, and engaging Director-, VP-, and C-suite stakeholders with executive poise and clarity.

Operational Rigor & Execution: Proven ability to manage complex resourcing across multiple concurrent tracks of work, establish dependable delivery cadences, track timeline health, and adapt swiftly to shifting business priorities in a fast-paced environment.

Executive Communication & Storytelling: Exceptional verbal, visual, and written communication skills. Proven track record of pitching strategic design vision, building consensus, and leading high-stakes reviews with executive and cross-functional leadership.

People Management & Talent Development: Demonstrated track record of coaching designers through ambiguous product spaces, elevating individual craft, conducting fair and constructive performance reviews, and retaining top talent.

Craft, Systems & Native Patterns: Deep fluency in native iOS Human Interface Guidelines, Android Material Design, responsive web paradigms, design systems governance, and modern design tooling (Figma, advanced prototyping).

Customer Research & Analytical Literacy: Experience partnering with UXR and Product Analytics to leverage qualitative feedback and quantitative behavioral data (e.g., Amplitude, Google Analytics, A/B testing) to inform design decisions and measure consumer impact.

Education & Background: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design, Product Design, or equivalent practical industry experience.

Nice to Have

Experience in real estate tech, two-sided marketplaces, consumer discovery/search, or similar consumer-facing platforms.

Experience integrating AI-assisted search, personalized recommendations, or intelligent discovery tools into consumer surfaces.

Active involvement in the broader design leadership community or design mentorship programs.

Compensation: The base pay range for this position is $204,000-$226,000 annually; however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Bonuses and restricted stock units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to a full range of benefits. Base pay is based on market location. Minimum wage for the position will always be met.

Perks that You Need to Know About:

Participation in our incentive programs (which may include eligible cash, equity, or commissions). Plus paid vacation, holidays, sick time, parental leave, and recharge leave; medical, tele-health, dental and vision benefits; 401(k) plan; flexible spending accounts (FSAs); commuter program; life and disability insurance; Maven (a support system for new parents); Carrot (fertility benefits);