Design Program Manager

Ford Pro is committed to transforming the future for customers, communities, and families. As a Design Program Manager, you will provide program management and operational support across teams to enhance communication and streamline processes, ensuring projects meet deadlines and deliverables.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with and support team leads in delivering the highest level of trust-building and strategic counsel through all project interactions
• Document and implement end-to-end repeatable processes that help the team plan, manage, and deliver
• Identify team needs with regards to process, tools, documentation, capacity, data and asset management, and educate leadership in order to bring changes to ensure designers and developers are working efficiently
• Act as a bridge across cross functional teams, connecting them and facilitating clear communication, ensuring interdependencies are understood and planned for
• Act as a design team advocate, working with Design Systems, Quality Assurance, and enterprise stakeholders to hold quality to the highest bar
• Communicate project status with team, stakeholders and senior management regularly (with visuals and data)
• Work with management and across teams to understand, coordinate, and prioritize initiatives
• Anticipate bottlenecks, provide escalation management, and articulate risks, trade-offs, and recommend prioritization based on a balance of business needs and constraints, capacity, and customer impact
• Guide design projects from pitch to completion by facilitating team productivity, advising on deadlines, managing expectations, and providing communication between teams and stakeholders
• Support design teams to scope new product initiatives, identify priorities, and deliver key projects, that have multiple stakeholders and moving parts
• Facilitate meetings to drive progress against goals and objectives, establishing clear next steps and owners, and resolving blocks that impede progress
• Proactively assess risk and resolve issues before they become problems for the larger teams
• Measure impact and operational efficiency of programs and initiatives both qualitatively and quantitatively
• Support the management team with effective team communication, proactive problem solving, data driven insights and information distribution

Requirements:

• Bachelors Degree in Engineering, Design or related field or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience
• 8+ years of successful experience as a Project or Program Manager, or similar role, in a creative environment
• 2+ years of experience leading large projects through their full life-cycle in a large, cross-functional team
• Experience working with global teams
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to present in a clear and concise manner to all levels within the enterprise
• Results oriented person with a proven track record of on-time project/program delivery for large, cross-functional projects with global stakeholders
• Experience working and contributing to project playbooks, building schedules, managing issues/risks, establishing communication plans and stakeholder management
• Experience with Agile and Lean methodologies, and with Jira
• Understanding of design and development processes. Experience working with design systems
• Ability to translate complex ideas and express them in concise, simple to understand ways
• Effectively using digital tools and platforms
• Experience working on multiple projects simultaneously while meeting deadlines with changing priorities