Director, Design Operations

About the Role

The Director, Design Operations is the operational backbone of the Experience Design practice at Gap Inc. This role defines and runs the processes, tools, workflows, and capacity management systems that enable a high-performing UX team to deliver inside a product operating model. Reporting to the VP of Experience Design, you will be directly responsible for how work comes in, how it gets prioritized, how capacity is allocated across value streams, and how quality is tracked and improved.

Gap Inc.’s Experience Design team operates across four brands (Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Athleta), three journey tracks (Customer, Product, Enterprise), and a managed services partnership that includes 48 designers across onshore and offshore locations. The practice is transitioning from an ad-hoc, project-driven model to an integrated product operating model with clear value stream alignment, stage-gated delivery, and measurable outcomes. Design Operations is what makes this transition real.

In this role, you will own the full UX operating model: intake, prioritization, estimation, stage gates, capacity planning, tooling, reporting, and the operational governance of our managed services partnership. You will build and continuously improve the systems that make the design function visible, accountable, and effective at scale. You will also lead research operations, enabling the infrastructure that supports AI-augmented research pipelines and enterprise-wide insights distribution.

This is not an administrative role. It is a leadership position that requires someone who is passionate about operational excellence as a craft, someone who sees process design with the same rigor a UX designer brings to product design. You will be a strong voice and advocate for the design function across the organization while building the trusted relationships with Product Management, Engineering, and Brand partners that earn design a seat at every table.

This role is based in San Francisco (2 Folsom Street) and requires onsite presence four or more days per week. Physical proximity to the VP of Experience Design, GTS leadership, and managed service partners is essential to the day-to-day partnership and problem-solving this role demands.

What You'll Do

• Define, implement, and continuously improve the end-to-end UX operating model: intake, prioritization, estimation, stage gates (G0–G4), design review cadences, and delivery workflows. Ensure the design practice is fully integrated into the product operating model, not running as a parallel track.

• Own UX capacity planning across Gap FTE and managed service provider resources. Maintain rolling visibility into who is working on what, where capacity exists, and where demand exceeds supply. When tradeoffs are needed, surface them clearly so prioritization decisions are conscious, not accidental.

• Facilitate cross-domain resource allocation decisions by surfacing capacity data and conflicts to domain design leaders, who own assignment decisions within their scope. Serve as first-line arbitrator for cross-domain resource conflicts, escalating to the VP of Experience Design only when domain leaders cannot reach resolution.

• Manage the operational relationship with the managed service provider: onboarding, knowledge transfer, quality standards, performance tracking, and continuous improvement. Define the boundary between Gap Design Ops (system, governance, strategy) and MSP Design Ops (execution coordination, sprint management, onshore-offshore handoffs). Ensure managed service provider resources are productive, accountable, and integrated into product teams.

• Own the UX tooling ecosystem: Figma, Jira, Confluence, Zeroheight, Storybook, dscout, and emerging AI tools. Evaluate, adopt, configure, and drive adoption. Have strong opinions about how tools should serve workflow, not the other way around.

• Leverage AI tooling across all aspects of Design Operations for efficiency: AI-assisted intake triage, automated capacity reporting, AI-powered QA checks, intelligent backlog prioritization, and streamlined reporting. Continuously identify new opportunities to use AI to improve how design teams work.

• Build and maintain dashboards and reporting systems that give UX leadership, Product Management, and Engineering real-time visibility into design capacity, throughput, quality, and bottlenecks. Track and report on contractual UX SLAs, driving baselining, instrumentation, and measurable improvement.

• Cultivate design system ambassadors across the organization. Identify representatives from each contributing team to act as liaisons with the central design system team, ensuring alignment, coordination, and consistent adoption across brands and value streams.

• Partner with UX Research leadership to build and scale research operations: participant recruitment pipelines, panel management, study scheduling, repository management, and insights distribution. Enable the AI-augmented research pipeline vision by providing the operational infrastructure for compressed research cycles.

• Design and facilitate cross-functional workshops, design sprints, design thinking sessions, and collaborative working sessions that bring UX, Product Management, Engineering, and Brand stakeholders together around shared problems. Build the facilitation infrastructure (templates, guides, follow-through mechanisms) that ensures workshop outputs translate to action.

• Be a strong, visible voice and advocate for the design function across GTS. Represent the operational needs, capacity realities, and value of UX in forums where design is not typically at the table: TPM planning, engineering capacity reviews, quarterly planning, and budget discussions.

• Build trusted relationships with Product Management, Engineering, TPM, and Brand Enablement counterparts. Earn a seat at the operational table through competence, reliability, and genuine partnership. Translate design capacity and constraints into language that cross-functional partners can act on.

• Practice and champion a learning culture. Treat every process as a hypothesis to be tested, measured, and evolved. Run retrospectives not as ceremonies but as genuine improvement engines. Continuously raise the bar on how the design practice operates.

• Manage both Gap Design Ops team members and managed service provider Design Ops resources. Inspire, develop, and hold people accountable. Create an environment where operational excellence is valued and where the team continuously improves how it supports the broader design organization.

Who You Are

• You have 8+ years of experience in design operations, UX operations, or product operations in a product-led organization. You have defined and implemented UX processes within a product operating model, including stage-gated delivery, sprint integration, and quarterly planning.

• You have managed capacity, intake, and resource allocation for design teams of 30 or more people, including distributed and offshore teams. You understand the operational complexity of scaling design across multiple brands, platforms, and geographies.

• You have experience managing or operationally governing managed service provider (MSP) or vendor design teams. You understand the distinction between strategic oversight and tactical execution, and you know how to maintain quality and craft standards while scaling through external partners.

• You are passionate about tools and workflow optimization. You have deep proficiency with the UX tools ecosystem (Figma, Jira, Confluence, design system tooling) and strong opinions about how tools should be configured to support the way designers actually work.

• You have hands-on experience with AI tools for operational efficiency and a genuine enthusiasm for finding new ways to use AI to improve how design teams work. You see AI as a force multiplier for operations, not a buzzword.

• You have experience building and facilitating cross-functional workshops, design sprints, and design thinking sessions with senior stakeholders. You can hold a room, drive to outcomes, and ensure follow-through.

• You have experience standing up or scaling research operations: recruitment, panel management, repository systems, and insights distribution. You understand how operational infrastructure enables research velocity.

• You are an excellent communicator who can translate design capacity and process into business language for Product, Engineering, Finance, and executive audiences. You make the invisible visible.

• You are a relationship builder who earns trust through competence, transparency, and follow-through. You advocate fiercely for the design function while genuinely partnering with cross-functional teams.

• You are willing to be onsite at Gap Inc. headquarters (2 Folsom Street, San Francisco) four or more days per week. You believe that physical presence alongside leadership, partners, and the teams you serve is how you do your best work.

• You know what operational excellence looks like in a design organization, and you elevate the systems, culture, and capability of everyone around you to achieve it.