Design Manager - Trips Foundations

 Tripsdesign&ux TripsInsurance

About the team

Join us in Amsterdam as a Design Manager, and be a part of the fast-growing UX organization in Booking.com’s Trips Business Unit. Today, the Trips Business Unit is building a platform that connects all parts of the trip – from accommodation to flights, transport, tickets, tours and more - leading the evolution of Booking.com from a single-product company to a multi-product offering company with an unprecedented, personalized travel experience to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

About the role

We’re looking for a Design Manager to join our Trips Foundation team. As a Design Manager in Trips Foundation, you’ll build and lead a team of eight designers. You’ll balance the career development of your team alongside the business needs of the Trips Foundation team – in order to build a thriving culture where Designers can grow in their careers and feel a strong sense of inclusion and belonging.You will be  responsible for pushing the design craft forward. Your primary focus is on empowering your direct reports to do their best work rather than doing practical design work as individual contributors. You will need to have a clear grasp of the needs of the business and work to effectively balance them alongside the needs of your direct reports, ensuring a clear understanding of expectations and minimizing surprises. As a strong design manager at Booking.com you will lead by example and inspire your team, and be comfortable setting a vision and roadmap that fellow leaders and designers can buy into.

At Booking.com

We know that travel means more than booking a hotel room or flight. The dreams you have and the plans you make. The places you visit, the sights you see, the journeys you take. The people you meet and the friends you make. The taste of new foods and the feel of clean, crisp white sheets. There are countless moments that shape every travel experience and we seek designers who can help curate and guide those moments to make every part of travel easy and enjoyable.

At Booking.com, data informs our design and business decisions. Technology is at our core. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code, or A/B tests. Our people are our biggest assets. Innovation and creativity are at hand. Through our products, partners and people, we strive to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, be that through unique and remote homes, luxury hotel accommodations, long-term stays, compelling loyalty and reward programs, transportation and flight bookings, curating the connecting trip. Come help us make it happen!

We value Diversity of all types and in an open, dynamic workplace. This has been a pillar at Booking.com since day one, and something we continue to strongly believe in and build today. Diversity is our strength. Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment.

Required skills and experience:

• 5+ years’ experience delivering global products in a similar large scale product led environment
• 1-3 years of successfully managing and mentoring designers in multidisciplinary teams
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Strong work ethic; self-directed and resourceful
• Solution-oriented and result-driven
• Proactive, flexible and capable of working independently as well as working as part of a UX and leadership team
• Extensive knowledge of current design processes, software, tools and techniques 

Preferred skills and experience:

• Experience working with a broad spectrum of designers and design deliverables, from brand implementation to visual design to interaction design and UI/IA
• Knowledge of Lean UX, Lean startup, Design Thinking, and agile

A successful candidate for our manager position will exhibit the following:

Management & Leadership

• Coaching and mentorship

• Coaches and mentors individual designers to improve craft, deliverables, communication, and career advancement.

• Evaluates and elevates process and craft through critique, review, or other measurable steps.

• Helps reports prioritize work, ensuring focus and right work/life balance.

• Works with individuals and groups to define clear and measurable day-to-day, quarterly, and longer-term goals, aligned with business and stakeholder needs.

• Team Management

• Identifies headcount needs for designers aligned to track or business objectives.

• Works with business and design stakeholders to assess gaps and acquire resources.

• Coordinates with HR and Central Design in order to recruit and interview candidates for identified roles.

• Owns workability and long-term illness cases with the assistance of the Senior Design Manager. 

• Stakeholder Management

• Manages stakeholders, processes, business priorities and projects, as well as the ability to influence and guide individuals.

• Networks across multiple teams, departments and disciplines as necessary to build relationships and achieve objectives and manage dependencies and stakeholders.

• Leadership

• Oversees team deliverables, allocation, performance, progression. 

• Is able to lead in ambiguous situations, with less or fragmented data, lack of decision support.

• Community

• Actively engages with other managers and departments in order to improve management processes, contribute to overall performance evaluation and improvement

Craft

• Expertise

• Acts as a subject matter expert on product design and product design processes, as well as their product area or business topic.

• Guides the department's leadership, product, and UX team members in appropriate ways to create, validate, and implement appropriate user-centered UX strategies, prototypes, UX solutions, and hypotheses through reviews and quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods.

• Guidance

• Advances reports’ understanding and application of user-centered design concepts, methods, and techniques to enable and advance quality design and outcomes. 

• Coaches on related communication, presentation, negotiation, and influence techniques. 

• Encourages data-led, not data-governed, decision making.

• Feedback Culture

• Encourages and enables their direct reports in facilitating workshops, sprints, critiques, reviews, or other collaborative processes across teams or tracks in order to engage direct reports, peers, and key stakeholders and in order to foster growth and improvement.

• Systems

• Champions an advanced understanding of Booking’s brand, copy and design standards, systems, and guidelines and their use across the work of their teams. 

• Works with design leadership and others to ensure product, craft, quality, and accessibility standards and requirements are applied across their reports’ tracks, teams and products.

• Develops and drives improvement or implementation plans to relevant design systems and design principles.

• Future-oriented

• Demonstrates and shares awareness of current and upcoming trends in market, technology and design.

Design roles are open to qualified candidates worldwide 

Our headquarters are located in one of the most vibrant cities in Europe, Amsterdam. We also have offices in London and Manchester. We provide assistance for you and your family with a generous relocation package, ensuring a smooth transition to working and living in Europe. We have successfully relocated 300+ technology professionals to Amsterdam in the last year.

With this role, you will have

• Diverse and creative colleagues from every corner of the world; with over 70 different nationalities within the technology department alone, you will be able to grow new skills and your career in a multicultural environment
• Full relocation support for you and your family to move to our headquarters in Amsterdam - one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe; we have fine-tuned this process by successfully relocating hundreds of professionals to Amsterdam in the past few years! We also have offices in London and Manchester
• Performance-based salary and benefits, 29 vacation days, career advancement, bonuses and stock potential
• Discount on Booking.com accommodations as well as other perks and benefits

Company-sponsored family and social activities to help our employees become integrated with each other and the Dutch culture (if applicable)

Applications

Are you a Design Executive, Manager, or Lead? Be sure to look for other postings or reach out to [[email protected]].

Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the open position at Booking.com.

You will work to elevate the design function, guiding design processes to identify customer needs and shape product strategy, continuously improve for design quality, and build a high performing team of skilled designers who craft compelling experiences that deliver real value to our users.

**Pre-Employment Screening:

**If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.