AI
Senior Interaction Designer – Design Planning & Operations : 26-03162
Akraya, Inc.
- 🇺🇸 United States
- On-site
- Senior
- 7 hours ago
- Jira
- Confluence
- Figma
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Agile
7 hours ago
Contract Type: W2 Only
Duration: 12+ Months
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Pay Range: $95 -$100 on W2
Education: Bachelor’s degree in Interaction Design, Human Factors, Product Design, Engineering, or a related discipline
Job Summary
The Senior Interaction Designer – Design Planning & Operations will help scale the effectiveness of the Interaction Design organization by driving planning, coordination, and operational execution across the Da Vinci product portfolio. This role focuses on organizing and enabling design activities from concept through implementation, ensuring that priorities, timelines, staffing, dependencies, and delivery plans align with product development milestones and business objectives.
The ideal candidate will have strong experience coordinating design activities across cross-functional product development teams, with a solid understanding of user-centered design methodologies and product development processes. The role will partner closely with Interaction Design leadership, Product Management, Engineering, Human Factors, and Program Management to improve operational efficiency, strengthen resource planning, provide portfolio visibility, and support high-quality outcomes in a complex product development environment.
Key Responsibilities
Design Planning & Coordination
- Plan and coordinate design activities across multiple product development programs.
- Partner with design leadership to establish priorities, timelines, staffing strategies, and execution plans.
- Develop and maintain design roadmaps, schedules, and tracking mechanisms to provide visibility into ongoing work.
- Align design activities with development milestones, phase-gate expectations, and business objectives.
- Identify dependencies, resource constraints, and risks that could impact design delivery.
- Improve the efficiency, consistency, and scalability of Interaction Design processes and workflows.
- Maintain operational frameworks supporting planning, prioritization, resource management, and execution.
- Provide visibility into team capacity, workload distribution, and overall portfolio health.
- Track key metrics related to planning accuracy, resource utilization, and organizational effectiveness.
- Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance design operations and delivery quality.
- Partner with Product Management, Engineering, Human Factors, and Program Management to align design activities with broader development initiatives.
- Facilitate planning sessions, design reviews, roadmap discussions, and milestone readiness reviews.
- Communicate design priorities, dependencies, risks, and tradeoffs to support effective decision-making.
- Build alignment across teams while advocating for design team requirements and end-user needs.
- Support the allocation of design resources across concurrent programs and initiatives.
- Contribute to forecasting, capacity planning, and identification of future staffing requirements.
- Monitor project progress and proactively identify operational challenges affecting delivery.
- Maintain portfolio-level reporting and communicate status, risks, and opportunities to design leadership.
- Champion best practices for planning and executing user-centered design activities.
- Promote adherence to established design and product development processes.
- Help mature design governance, review processes, documentation, and execution practices.
- Contribute to the evolution of Interaction Design operations within a highly regulated product development environment.
- Minimum 8 years of relevant professional experience.
- Experience leading or coordinating design activities within cross-functional product development teams.
- Strong understanding of user-centered design methodologies and product development processes.
- Demonstrated ability to balance strategic planning with day-to-day execution.
- Exceptional organizational, facilitation, and communication skills.
- Ability to influence and align diverse stakeholders without direct authority.
- Experience managing multiple concurrent initiatives, priorities, and deadlines.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-support skills.
- Experience developing project plans, roadmaps, schedules, tracking mechanisms, or operational reports.
- Experience in medical devices, healthcare technology, or other regulated industries.
- Experience supporting UX, Interaction Design, or Human Factors organizations.
- Proficiency with Jira, Confluence, Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, and Microsoft 365.
- Familiarity with Agile and hybrid product development methodologies.
- Experience with portfolio planning, capacity management, operational reporting, and resource forecasting.
- Bachelor’s degree in Interaction Design, Human Factors, Product Design, Engineering, or a related discipline.
- Experience coordinating design operations across multiple product development programs.
- Ability to identify resource constraints, manage dependencies, and proactively mitigate delivery risks.
- Experience improving design governance, planning frameworks, and operational processes.
- Ability to provide clear portfolio-level visibility to leadership and support effective cross-functional decision-making.
- Experience working in complex product development environments where quality, user experience, and delivery milestones are critical.
ABOUT AKRAYA
Akraya is an award-winning IT staffing firm consistently recognized for our commitment toexcellence and a thriving work environment. Most recently, we were recognized Stevie Employer of the Year 2025, SIA Best Staffing Firm to work for 2025, Inc 5000 Best Workspaces in US (2025 & 2024) and Glassdoor's Best Places to Work (2023 & 2022)!
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Senior Interaction Designer – Design Planning & Operations : 26-03162 · Akraya, Inc.