Principal Design Program Manager

Salesforce

Principal Design Program Manager collaborating with UX and product teams to optimize design delivery processes. Empowering teams and building partnerships for effective design operations at Salesforce.

Posted 6/23/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $197,300 - $313,700 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

This role requires someone who is a relationship builder and an operational thinker; someone who is fluent in the best practices of user experience and design delivery, and who wants to empower the Experience Design team to partner with our product teams in a sustainable and healthy way.
You will operationalize how our design and real search team works together, and create rituals and cadences that foster team connection, a shared purpose, and a collaborative UX community.
You’ll create new processes and frameworks that help Experience teams define, prioritize, and review its work, and then bring this work forward for consumption by Salesforce’s other UX teams.
You will connect the dots between our product teams’ roadmaps and UX’s priorities and deliverables, helping both groups manage design dependencies and deliver successfully.
You’ll liaise with design leadership and build strong partnerships with cross-functional stakeholders.
You will be the point-of-contact for a complex network of business units and functions, and own regular communications up, down, and out to assure alignment and clarity of goals.
You’ll be the strategic nerve center of the product UX’s leadership team, coordinating reviews, leading team events, and coordinating presentation material for partner audiences.

Requirements

What you’ll need

At least 7 years experience working in enterprise software in any combination of Design, DesignOps, or PgM roles.
Outstanding partnership, interpersonal, and relationship-building skills.
The ability to collaborate well in a cross-functional, matrix’d management environment, and work across multiple departments and business units.
Proven experience partnering directly with product management and engineering teams, with an understanding of their priorities, constraints, and how UX informs their work streams.
Thorough familiarity with how design gets done.
Understand what happens when and why, what natural dependencies exist, how to mitigate risks, and when it’s OK to be visionary (and when it’s not).
Superb communication skills that shine in-person and across multiple mediums.
The talent to tell a story, advocate for a project or program, and facilitate understanding to different audiences at whichever level is appropriate.
Strong understanding of what it takes to ship software at scale.
Experience running projects using agile and/or scrum processes, and understand development team make-ups (i.e., roles, responsibilities, and how they interact).
Ability to learn and master internal project management tools to ensure design work is properly represented and tracked, and contribute new tools and processes to make work more visible to the entire organization.
BS in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Benefits

Comp & perks

time off programs
medical
dental
vision
mental health support
paid parental leave
life and disability insurance
401(k)
employee stock purchasing program

ATS Keywords

✓ Tailor your resume

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools

DesignDesignOpsProject ManagementAgileScrumUser ExperienceDesign DeliverySoftware DevelopmentRisk MitigationProcess Frameworks

Soft Skills

Relationship BuildingInterpersonal SkillsCollaborationCommunicationStorytellingAdvocacyFacilitationOperational ThinkingTeam CoordinationStrategic Thinking