Sr. Product Design Manager, Platform

Sr. Product Design Manager, Platform

At Rippling, Design is at the core of our mission to free smart people to tackle hard problems. We help teams automate the mundane, surface insights instantly, and operate with clarity and confidence. In a world of outdated, bloated legacy products, we're building something modern, streamlined, and deeply considered. A thoughtful user experience is how we turn complexity into simplicity so our customers can stay focused on what matters.

As a Senior Manager on Platform, you'll lead a team of designers focused on Rippling's core experience which may include portions of our shared surfaces like our navigation and home in addition to our data offerings and how customers gain insight into their business. You'll also be hands-on shaping system-wide AI experiences and platform primitives that other product teams build on. This role offers a unique opportunity to lead a business-critical team, design innovative foundational experiences from the ground up, and reimagine key workflows at platform scale for massive customer impact.

The Platform is differentiated in Rippling—it drives the portfolio's overall success and each feature improvement or new product has outsized impact on Rippling's growth and, more importantly, our customers' success. If you're a seasoned leader who thrives in high-velocity environments, handles complexity with confidence, and picks up new domains quickly—we'd love to hear from you.

What You Will Do

• Lead a business-critical platform team driving foundational improvements across Rippling's core experience—design systems, shared surfaces, and system-wide AI experiences—fueling company growth and differentiation.
• Guide a team of designers shaping platform primitives and cross-product experiences, including component libraries, tokens, theming, navigation, search, approvals, notifications, and accessibility.
• Design large-scale, complex experiences that are learnable, powerful, trustworthy, and efficient for users across the globe.
• Create a culture of craft, quality, and execution by inspiring, motivating, and leading product designers across experience levels to do the best work of their careers.
• Define and steward quality bars and decision frameworks (principles, reviews, quality gates) that drive high-quality decisions across the organization.
• Establish contribution and governance models for the design system with Engineering to ensure adoption, performance, and accessibility at scale.
• Prototype and ship system-wide AI experiences (assistive workflows, smart defaults, summarization) in partnership with AI/ML and core product teams.
• Partner closely with Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, and executive leadership to deliver best-in-class, innovative work that pushes the limits of what's possible.

What You Will Need

• 8+ years of professional design experience, with 3+ years leading and managing design teams.
• Proven track record of delivering high-impact, customer-focused projects.
• Must be familiar with complexity: demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity and interdependent systems, turning complexity into simple, learnable patterns.
• Proven ability to drive high-quality decisions through organizations, establishing mechanisms (principles, reviews, quality bars) that align cross-functional stakeholders.
• Exemplary craft with specific, concrete portfolio examples (interaction, visual, information architecture, or UX writing) and clear before/after impact.
• Systems thinker with hands-on experience designing integrated product suites or feature ecosystems; experience building and governing design systems at scale is a plus.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to persuade and influence stakeholders.
• Collaborative approach to working with Engineering, Product, and Marketing to drive both product strategy and rigorous, operational execution.
• Experience leading, recruiting, and scaling design teams in both startups and established companies, including systematically growing designers' skills to do the best work of their careers.

Rippling is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected characteristics. Rippling is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities who need assistance during the hiring process.

Rippling highly values having employees working in-office to foster a collaborative work environment and company culture. For office-based employees (employees who live within a defined radius of a Rippling office), Rippling considers working in the office, at least three days a week under current policy, to be an essential function of the employee's role.

This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity. The salary for US-based employees will be aligned with one of the ranges below based on location; see which tier applies to your location here.

The pay range for this role is:

168,000 - 294,000 USD per year (US San Francisco Bay Area)