Design Program Manager, Research Operations

Description

Who we are

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies - from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups - use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone's reach while doing the most important work of your career.

Stripe’s Design organization builds the product and brand experiences that millions of businesses and developers rely on. We’re a cross-functional, global organization of product designers, content designers, design researchers, design systems engineers, motion designers, and design program specialists.

Our mission is to make economic infrastructure simple and accessible. Design plays a central role by making complex flows understandable, crafting clear product language, and building consistent systems that scale.

The Design Operations team leads Design’s business operations, runs cross-organizational programs, and builds the systems that help teams collaborate and produce high-quality work. Design Program Managers guide complex programs through the design lifecycle and apply design thinking to our operating model. They prototype and iterate on how our team works.

We’re looking for a Design Program Manager to partner with the Research team. This full-time role reports to the Head of Design Operations.

Responsibilities

• Lead and build programs for the Research organization. Develop and implement processes and resources that support impactful research and scale the use of user insights across Stripe.
• Improve our operating model and processes, including automating tasks, improving workflows, and developing repeatable methodologies. Measure the impact of these changes.
• Prepare researchers to use agentic workflows, including designing, building, and overseeing autonomous, multi-agent workflows.
• Build custom tools, agents, automations, and skills for Research workflows and responsibilities.
• Evaluate and implement new tools with researchers and cross-functional partners to support new capabilities across Stripe.
• Work with researchers and designers across disciplines, skills, backgrounds, and specialties. Identify patterns and scale successful tools and approaches for broader team use.
• Partner with Research leadership and the Design Operations team to balance competing priorities and make effective use of team resources. Identify potential obstacles and risks to key programs. Develop solutions, solve problems effectively, and use decision-making frameworks to support timely resolution.
• Source and evaluate third-party vendors when needed. Work with Legal, Security, and Procurement to onboard and pay vendors, including managing statements of work, business terms, and budgets.

Requirements

• We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.
• You understand research work. You have direct experience in Design or can quickly learn the workflows, deliverables, tools, and pressures relevant to Stripe researchers. You recognize that understanding someone’s work is necessary before changing it.
• You have hands-on experience building artificial intelligence (AI) agents, automations, and tools. You’ve built solutions that changed how work gets done, and you can build alongside the people you support.
• You’re an effective coach and communicator. You adapt your approach to different audiences and help people adopt new ways of working.
• You recognize patterns and think in systems. When you build something that works for one person, you look for ways to make it useful to others.
• You’re persistent and versatile, with skills that can apply across the company.
• You prioritize action and speed. You can show someone a useful proof of concept on their own deliverable today, while continuing to build toward longer-term platform goals.
• Minimum requirements
• 5+ years of experience in design thinking, qualitative or quantitative research, user experience, or program management, including experience partnering with research teams.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience building AI-powered tools, agents, automations, or workflows that improved real work processes for designers, researchers, creative teams, or product teams.
• Experience coaching, teaching, or enabling others, formally or informally, with evidence of changes in how people work.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences and adapt your style to different learners.
• Experience working across multiple workstreams and relationships at the same time. You’ll support a Research team that works across Stripe’s product, marketing, support, and design teams.
• A product-builder mindset for solving the last-mile problem: turning standalone AI experiments into polished, production-ready products that are easy to find and use.
• Preferred qualifications
• Experience with research and design tooling ecosystems, such as Qualtrics, Sprig, Figma, Dovetail, or design system management tools.
• Experience with AI development tools and platforms, such as Claude, Claude Code, Codex, custom agent frameworks, application programming interface (API) integrations, or workflow automation tools.
• Experience with change management, organizational transformation, or large-scale enablement programs.
• Experience building and scaling internal tools, templates, or playbooks adopted beyond your immediate team.