Job Description

Zendesk builds software crafted to improve customer and employee experiences. We lead the industry with beautifully simple software, but we’re constantly innovating and can’t wait to outdo ourselves in the future! As a product design team we believe in a collaborative working style with a bias towards rapid prototyping, experimentation, and a strong curiosity for our customers and their needs.

About the role:

We are looking for a Product Design Manager to join our team in **Pune, India. **You will lead and mentor a growing team of talented designers, ensuring they thrive in a global environment. You will play a key role in integrating designers into the broader design practice, maintaining a high bar of quality, and scaling the team as we continue to grow. As a Design Manager, you are a strong design leader who loves coaching, fostering collaboration, and driving impactful user experiences. As the first design manager in Pune, you will shape the local design culture from the ground up, playing a critical role in building a world-class design practice that aligns with our global product strategy.

This role reports to Director, Product Design in the United States and will collaborate closely with teams and leaders in the United States, Australia, and Singapore.

What you’ll be doing everyday:

• Translating strategy and business goals while managing designers across a diverse range of projects.

• Actively build and maintain relationships with cross-functional teams and stakeholders across Zendesk

• Help scale our design practice by recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new employees

• Provide regular performance feedback, check-ins, and coaching to your direct reports

• Champion design quality by shaping design critiques, providing regular feedback, and more

• Adopt and refine processes, workflows and templates that allow the team to scale our impact

• Provide design guidance and recommendations on Zendesk product initiatives

• Contribute to the development of the design practice. Share back successful practices, frameworks, tools, lessons learned that worked in your team

• Foster a growing design culture by keeping a pulse on team morale and finding opportunities for improvement

What you need to succeed:

• Experience mentoring designers to deliver their best work

• Collaborative mindset with excellent communication skills

• 5+ years experience in design or related fields

• 3+ years experience managing, coaching and developing direct reports

• You have a portfolio that showcases your work, provides details of your role on projects, and shows examples of functional designs that teams you have managed have developed from start to finish

Please note that Zendesk can only hire candidates who are physically located and plan to work from Karnataka or Maharashtra. Please refer to the location posted on the requisition for where this role is based.

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.