Design Manager

About Fearless Digital

Take the next step in your career now, scroll down to read the full role description and make your application.

Fearless Digital builds software with a soul. As a division inside Fearless, we're part of its digital services integrator model to unlock the power of organizations, people and tech.

Our division designs, engineers, and delivers digital solutions to solve problems and drive impact. Using iterative development cycles, we minimize risk for our customers and efficiently deliver intuitive and responsive technology.

In this way, we help set the stage for tech to work better for people. That's not our only goal, though. We also strive to create a purple culture that makes our team members excited to come to work every day.

We take a holistic approach to our people’s well-being, and our culture and benefits are designed to support our people in working the way they like best.

We encourage our people to pursue their passions, both in and out of the office. With flexible schedules, continuing education support, and a family-friendly work environment, we’ve created a culture that allows our team to thrive professionally and personally.

Fearless believes in equal opportunity employment. We won’t discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of race, gender, nationality, age, religion, disability, military status, or sexual orientation.

As a company and as individuals, we’re committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for our team, our family members, our clients, our subcontractors, and our vendors.

Fearless Digital Benefits

Our people make us who we are. We believe that every member of the Fearless team has something to share, and we value the unique viewpoint you’ll bring to our community.

But we value your community, too, so we offer fulfilling work that stays in balance with the rest of life. Here are a few highlights of our benefits package :

• Life-friendly schedules
• Family-friendly workplace
• PTO allowance (not accrued so you get it up front!) We believe in taking time off to be well and thrive. That's why we offer 14 days of PTO, 8.

75 days of sick leave, 11 federal holidays, your birthday (floating day), jury duty, and bereavement.

• Up 12 weeks of FMLA paid at 100%
• We cover 100% of your premium for our medical HSA plan + the deductible portion of HSA contributions, 80% of your premium for our HMO or PPO plans, and offer competitive dependent coverage.

We cover 100% of dental and vision premiums for you and your dependents and offer medical and dependent care FSA options.

We also offer life insurance, short- and long-term disability coverage, and legal planning and support insurance.

• Tech, education / training, and wellness allowances
• Safe Harbor 401(k) plan with employer contributions and immediate vesting
• Referral bonus : Bring your friends! If someone you refer is hired, you’ll get a bonus of $6 12k!
• Total Pet Plan
• Employee Assistance Program

Compensation

Our Compensation System is designed to reward remarkable work, grow your impact and support the whole you over the course of your career.

We believe in paying people fairly, so we've established a compensation model aimed to ensure everyone at Fearless regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, age, nationality, or negotiation skills is given equal pay for equal work.

Our approach to compensation is intended to ensure our total package serves all of your needs and includes base pay, medical and other benefits, performance rewards, 401k matching, plus a few perks (tech and wellness reimbursement programs)! Our salary ranges are determined based on role, level and location and provide team members salary growth within a salary grade over time.

Team members automatically progress within a salary range through annual increases (given to reward service at Fearless) or merit increases (given to reward and individual's demonstrated performance and growth within the position).

Fearless team members are also eligible for discretionary bonuses based on company performance.

Salary Range

• AL, FL, GA, TN Residents : $100,817 (min) - $131,062 (mid) - $161,307 (max)
• NC Residents : $103,935 (min) - $135,115 (mid) - $166,296 (max)
• DE, MD, PA, TX, VA Residents : $109,132 (min) - $141,871 (mid) - $174,610 (max)
• DC Residents : $122,643 (min) - $159,436 (mid) - $196,229 (max)
• CA & NY Residents : $126,800 (min) - $164,841 (mid) - $202,881 (max)

Location :

In-person, hybrid, and remote options are available. Our office is located in Baltimore.

Fearless is looking for a Design Manager to add to our diverse team of 250+ employees (and counting!).

What You’ll Be Doing

We’re looking to change the world by building software with a soul, and we want your help. The Design Manager manages things like design processes, tools, and business outcomes.

This role leads design operations on cross-functional teams to support the delivery of digital products and services. They enable the team to be as effective as possible by creating the conditions for their teams to do their best work.

They coach cross-functional teams to adopt human-centered and inclusive principles, adaptive systems, and processes that enable the team to scale and pivot effectively.

Responsibilities And Contributions

Organizational and Leadership Role

• Develops scalable design operations for multiple cross-functional teams, as well as Business Development strategies for new opportunities.
• Coaches and mentors others in the Design practice to enhance their professional skills and cultivate a community of growth and development.
• Grows our design community and strategies, leads discussions of design practices and standards, and contributes to practice area communities and activities.

Functional Role

Communication and collaboration

• Mentors team members, customers, and stakeholders on design operations principles to increase team impact.
• Acts as a liaison between the internal team and the customer, external teams, and other stakeholders to ensure interdependencies are understood and planned for.
• Engages with the team and customers to capture and prioritize work to ensure business outcomes and customer needs are met.
• Defines and refines the overall project roadmap, milestones, and delivery timing in collaboration with customers and key stakeholders.
• Assesses and designs improvements to communication flows from individual contributors to team leads, and outward to customers, partners, and other stakeholders.

Strategy

• Partners with team leads to ensure the strategic vision is executed within given timelines and quality standards.
• Develops, manages, and communicates key metrics on the health of the team's operations and business outcomes.
• Develops team capacity and design resources based on a deep understanding of the customer mission, business needs, project milestones, and skills needed to execute the work.
• Identifies, develops, and implements systems and processes that monitor and measure the quality control of outputs and outcomes.
• Supports the strategic and tactical prioritization of design initiatives and workflows.

Team operations

• Manages the day-to-day design operations of the team including organizing the team's logistics, orchestrating design efforts with cross-functional partners, and supporting internal initiatives, scheduling, reporting, and resource management.
• Identifies team needs as well as critical gaps and weaknesses related to processes, tools, documentation, asset management, etc.
• Leads the team on how to balance multiple priorities and needs, making sure interdependencies are understood, communicated, and planned for effectively.
• Develops and continuously iterates on foundational processes for effectively scaling design operations.
• Ensures the team has access to what they need to do their work well and are able to scale and pivot as the customer's priorities change by improving flow and reducing friction or repetition.

Must-Have Skills

Essential Skills, Experience, or Competencies

• Demonstrated experience establishing flexible systems and programmatic approaches to organizational challenges.
• Expert knowledge of human-centered design methodologies and design thinking principles.
• Expert in identifying and defining customer and business needs, opportunities, and problems and developing strategies and solutions to address them.
• Demonstrated experience connecting design operations to teams working in an agile environment.
• Expert ability to craft solutions that improve the quality and delivery of design for digital products and services.
• Proven ability to effectively manage operations in ambiguous situations with diverse partners, and willingness to pivot as needed.
• Demonstrated experience managing and building scalable design processes for multiple complex programs and teams in an iterative, fast-paced environment.
• Expert at communicating outcomes, objectives, conceptual ideas, and design rationale in verbal and written form, and influencing others to achieve said outcomes.
• Expert ability to manage cross-functional projects, dependencies, and bottlenecks.
• Demonstrated experience running multiple competing priorities simultaneously and with minimal direction.
• Expert knowledge, understanding, and application of design and research processes, methods, tools, and roles.
• Experience collaborating with and motivating cross-functional teams, such as engineering and product teams, to deliver exceptional experiences and products.
• Ability to balance long-term strategic thinking and near-term organization, planning, and execution.
• Ability to operate and manage work, strategically reason, and build relationships and influence others.

Icing-on-the-Cake Skills

• Experience working with government agencies.
• Understanding of front-end development principles, functions, and limitations.
• Experience working with a variety of visual design and prototyping tools, such as Sketch, Adobe CC, Figma, Invision, or Axure.
• Experience working with a variety of collaboration tools, such as Jira, Confluence, Mural, or Miro.
• Experience planning and facilitating participatory design activities and workshops with teams and customers.

So, what’s next?

Over the years, we’ve honed our interview process to help ensure that every employee we hire is the right fit for us and that we’re the right fit for them.

If we think you’re a good fit, we’ll get in touch and start scheduling your interviews! Depending on the role's / project's requirements, the interview process may include some differences. At the minimum :

• Introductory Interview : This is where you and your recruiter will build rapport, explore your career and educational background, discuss salary expectations, role requirements, and set expectations for the interview process, specific to the position of interest.
• Technical Interview (Skills Fit) : This is where we get into the nitty gritty of the project. During the Technical Interview, you’ll be interviewed by the technical team to dig more into your background and technical capabilities.
• Business Interview : At this point, you’ve made it to the final frontier! The Business Interview is when you’ll meet with Fearless leadership to dot the i’s, cross the t’s, and determine whether or not we’ll be moving forward with the hiring process.

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