UX Design Operations Lead

Celigo is a modern integration and automation platform (iPaaS) on a mission to simplify how companies integrate, automate, and optimize processes. Purpose-built for mission-critical processes, Celigo offers unique tools such as runtime AI and pre-built integrations tailored to resolve the biggest integration challenges, making Celigo incomparably easier to maintain.

About the Role

The UX Operations Lead is an individual contributor role responsible for establishing, scaling, and continuously improving the operational foundations that enable Product Design, User Research, and Content Strategy teams to deliver consistently high-quality work with speed and predictability.

This role is equal parts strategy and hands-on execution: you will design the mechanisms, run them, measure them, and iterate. You will act as the operational backbone of the UX organization. You will create clarity across how work enters the UX organization, how it gets planned and reviewed, how it ships, and how impact is measured. You will own critical operational programs (intake, planning, sprint and ritual facilitation, tooling and governance,team documentation, metrics), and you will partner closely with UX leadership, Product Operations, Product Management, Engineering, and other cross-functional teams to align design execution with product delivery rhythms.

You will be a part of and partner closely with UX leadership to support our cross-functional partners in Product Management, Engineering, other business teams to align design execution with product priorities and product delivery rhythms. This role also plays a key part in maturing our UX practice, leading change management efforts, and making UX impact more visible across the product group and the broader organization.

This is an UX operations and program leadership role; success is measured by scalable systems and measurable improvements in how UX teams plan, collaborate, and deliver, not by individual design deliverables.

Key Responsibilities:

Design Operations Strategy & Enablement

• Define and own the UX operational roadmap in partnership with UX leadership and the broader team, balancing near-term delivery needs with long-term scalability and ensuring alignment with product roadmaps and business priorities.

• Establish and continuously improve team rituals that increase execution quality and reduce coordination overhead (planning, reviews, crits, showcases, onboarding/offboarding, internal communications).

• Lead change management efforts to drive effective and sustainable adoption of new PDLC processes, tooling, and operational standards across UX and cross-functional partners.

• Partner closely with the Product Operations function to align UX planning, intake, prioritization, and delivery rhythms with product management and engineering operating models.

Process Optimization & Program Management

• Continuously improve UX planning, intake, prioritization, and delivery processes, including playing a key role in quarterly and annual planning and design sprint support.

• Independently manage complex, cross-functional UX programs end-to-end, identifying risks, dependencies, and opportunities for optimization with product management and engineering partners in order to support UX team members. .

• Drive UX capacity planning and resourcing helping the team to translate product demand into realistic delivery plans.

• Support content planning and capacity management, helping translate product roadmaps and UX demand into realistic content delivery plans and sequencing.

• Enable effective cross-functional collaboration between content, design, product, engineering, and localization by clarifying roles, handoffs, and dependencies.

Tooling, AI enablement, and vendor management

• Own the UX toolchain strategy and administration (for example Figma org governance, design system tooling, research repository, survey/usability platforms, AI-assisted workflows), ensuring reliable access, onboarding, documentation, and support.

• Evaluate and pilot emerging tools (including AI) with defined success criteria, adoption measurement, and scale/retire recommendations.

• Manage procurement, renewals, and vendor relationships in partnership with Legal, Security, IT, and Finance; ensure compliance with licensing and data handling expectations.

Design system, content ops, and research ops enablement

• Partner with Design System leadership to support governance, contribution model, documentation, and adoption at scale.

• Improve content operations and readiness as needed: content planning and sequencing, editorial workflows in design, review and approval loops, and integration points with product release processes.

• Enable research operations as needed (participant recruitment support, engagement tracking, vendor coordination, research tooling administration), and help standardize how insights are stored and reused.

Knowledge management and UX effectiveness metrics

• Maintain UX playbooks, templates, and self-serve resources so teams can execute consistently and independently.

• Define, baseline, and report on UX operational metrics such as throughput, capacity, cycle time, predictability, quality signals, and tooling adoption; synthesize insights into executive-ready narratives and dashboards.

Cross-Functional Partnership & Advocacy

• Serve as a key liaison between UX, Product, Engineering, and business partners to improve collaboration and delivery outcomes.

• Support UX onboarding and operational enablement for new team members.

• Advocate for UX operational excellence and help mature design and research practices across the organization.

Qualifications:

• 6+ years in UX, Product Design, Research, Content, Program Management, or related disciplines, including 3+ years in DesignOps, UX Ops, Design Program Management, UX Program Management, or a closely related operations role.

• Hands-on experience with common product and design delivery workflows (Agile/Scrum/Lean UX) and tooling (design collaboration tools and project tracking tools such as Jira/Asana/Wrike equivalents).

• Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity and drive organizational change while fostering a supportive and resilient UX organization.

• Demonstrated experience building and scaling operational systems: intake, planning cadences, governance, documentation, and metrics.

• Strong understanding of the product development lifecycle and how design, research, and content integrate with engineering and product management.

• Excellent analytical, communication, collaboration and stakeholder-influencing skills.

A portfolio of product design work is not required; instead, candidates should be prepared to discuss programs they ran, systems they built, metrics they improved, and tools/processes they governed.

Note: This role is expected to work primarily in Eastern Time hours.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Background as a UX or Product Designer, User Researcher, or Content Strategist, with hands-on experience in design operations and product delivery workflows.

• Experience supporting or governing design systems at scale, including accessibility and documentation standards.

• Familiarity with research operations, participant recruitment models, and research tooling.

• Experience creating UX operations reporting for leadership (dashboards, KPI narratives, operating reviews).

• Prior experience in an enterprise SaaS or platform-based product organization.

Why Celigo?

• Number one solution for the fourth consecutive quarter in the G2 Winter 2025 iPaaS report

• Celigo is a Visionary in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for iPaaS, a 2025 Gartner Customer Choice for iPaaS, a G2 iPaaS Leader, and a recognized leader in AI

• Competitive compensation

• High-growth, collaborative, and inclusive work environment

• Starting with your first year, we offer 3-weeks of vacation, wellness days, and holidays to recharge and spend time with family and friends

• Generous benefits package, including parental leave

• Monthly tech stipend

• Recognition opportunities

• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

As a company, one of the values we hold most dear is fostering a safe, collaborative environment to bring out the best in us, so we created our Taking a Stand Initiative. Our TAS initiative is a volunteer committee open to all Celigans, with representation from underrepresented voices within our company. We believe, unequivocally, that everyone deserves to be in a place where they feel welcome as they are. Learn more about Taking a Stand.

Celigo is proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, age, disability, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, military and veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

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