At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code or A/B tests. We’re the thrill of the first night in a new place. The excitement of the next morning. The friends you make. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the food you sample. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

We’re a truly global e-commerce company, with business operations in nearly every country and city on the planet. And we want to make it easy for everyone, anywhere in the world, to pay for their travel or do business with our platform – whenever and however it’s convenient for them.

Our brand-new FinTech business unit – with teams in Amsterdam, London, Bangalore, and Shanghai – develops new products and drives innovation to help us continue removing financial friction from the travel process. That makes buying and selling travel-related products and services simpler for both travelers and partners

We are looking for a Senior Design Manager to join the team who can lead a versatile group of Designers to deliver the best in class payments experience for our customers.

About the role:

As a Senior Design Manager in FinTech, you’ll report into a Design Director and lead the team of Design Managers that run design efforts of multiple groups of designers. As a leader, you understand the career development needs of your direct reports, the business needs of the company, and how to effectively align the two in a healthy and productive way. You’ll work to elevate the whole of the design organization as a function and a team, and champion the voice of the customer across the Fintech organization. You’ll be based in our brand-new Amsterdam HQ and work with some of our industry’s most thoughtful people.

Your responsibilities:

Management & Leadership

• Manages a team of managers; including their allocation, performance, owns workability cases
• A servant leader; highly comfortable working with leaders of different skills and experience levels, and strives to grow the managers reporting to them into the best possible leaders they can be.
• An organization architect - proactively identifies designer headcount needs and works with their direct reports and overall business area leadership in order to plan, recruit, interview, and hire to fill those needs.
• Works with individuals and groups to define clear and measurable higher level goals across tracks and teams that are aligned with business and stakeholder needs for their area of business
• Helps reports prioritize work across teams to ensure the right balance of product and community focused initiatives and projects and works to align resources against these in a way that capitalizes on individual and team strengths.
• Demonstrates experience managing stakeholders, processes, business priorities and projects across an area of business and exert influence toward positive outcomes
• Manages out and up as effectively as down. Actively networks across the business and proactively builds productive relationships across disciplines of all levels
  
  

Craft

• Go to person in their area of business for matters of UX design processes, as well as how design can better serve their product area or business topic;
• Shares expert knowledge of user flows, product features, and underlying technologies across teams and tracks - demonstrates a working understanding of the larger user and business context of their product area; Contributes to advancements in Booking.com's design and development principles, standards, components, and practices.
• Connects the dots between the work of their teams and those outside their areas of business and facilitates collaborative processes to provide continual direction in design and innovation.
• Drives consistent adherence of relevant design systems and principles across all teams within their area of business and ensures relevant understanding and support from area leadership and key stakeholders.
• Demonstrates awareness of current and upcoming trends in market, technology and design; Shares this knowledge widely and encourages others to learn.
  
  

Commercial Awareness & Communication

• Acts as a consistent advocate for end user needs and perspectives in product area discussions, reviews, and critiques.
• Guides team members in understanding appropriate strengths and weaknesses of each research and data gathering method(ex, user-testing, quantitative and qualitative methods) and connects their approach to high-level efforts and initiatives.
• Demonstrates fluent understanding of track area's business models and strategies; Actively contributes to strategy through collaboration with other track leadership and managers.
• Champions adherence and consistency to established design and UX copy standards and guidelines across their area of business at all levels and disciplines.
• Actively engages with other managers and departments in order to improve management processes, contribute to overall performance evaluation and improvement.
  
  

Required skills:

• Coaches and mentors individual designers and design managers to improve craft, deliverables, communication, and career advancement; evaluates and elevates individuals’ process and craft through critique, review, or other measurable steps.
• Hires new employees - identifies organizational needs for designers aligned with business objectives
• Actively contributes to strategy through collaboration with leaders in engineering and product development.
• Managing stakeholders, business priorities and projects, as well as the ability to influence and guide individuals. Networks across multiple tracks, business units and disciplines to achieve objectives, proactively builds productive relationships across teams.
• Highly adept at product design processes, as well as their product area or business topic. Advances reports’ understanding and application of user-centered design concepts, methods, and techniques to enable and advance quality design and outcomes.
• 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 to provide continual direction in design and innovation.
• 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.
• Follows current and upcoming trends in market, technology and design; Shares this knowledge widely and encourages others to learn.
• Advocates for end user needs and perspectives in product area discussions, reviews, and critiques.
• Enables understanding of track or area's business models and strategies amongst their team and the utilization of this in product design strategies.
• Champions an advanced understanding of Booking’s brand, copy and design standards, systems, and guidelines.
  
  

Experience

We’re looking for candidates who have 8+ years design experience as an Individual Contributor, delivering global products in a similar large scale product led environment. With extensive experience of successfully managing and/or mentoring managers of designers.

• 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 in a team
• Over 5 years of successfully managing and mentoring designers and design managers
• Experience managing other UX related disciplines or managing multidisciplinary individuals and teams
• Over 8+ years directly applicable IC (Individual Contributor) design experience
• Relevant industry experience in FinTech or Payments
• Extensive knowledge of design processes
• Documented creative ability to develop ideas, flows, designs and propositions to engage customers
• Strong theoretical and practical user-centered design skills
• Experience of working with Tech and Commercial stakeholders, and managing their objectives
• Experience and knowledge of A/B and multivariate testing processes
• Knowledge of Lean UX, Lean startup, Design Thinking, and dual track agile

Our designers combine their knowledge and expertise with the goals of our business to deliver a world-class user experience to our diverse, loyal user-base. At Booking.com, design is a team sport, and together we solve hard problems while keeping the user at the center of everything we do.

Ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace is part of our core values. We are an equal opportunity employer and know that a team of different backgrounds, abilities, and perspectives makes us thrive and build better products. We are fortunate to have one of the most diverse design teams in the world and we do our best work when we join forces. We’re looking forward to welcoming you into our team of exceptionally talented and fun colleagues, where you'll do challenging and rewarding work.

We offer:

This role is open to candidates worldwide. We provide assistance for you and your family (if applicable) with a generous relocation package, ensuring a smooth transition to working and living in Amsterdam.

• Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide
• Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture
• We aim to empower you to do your best work, whether in the office or at home, as well as 20 days per year to work from abroad with our Work from Abroad benefit* (subject to terms and conditions)
• Opportunity to utilize technical expertise, leadership capabilities and entrepreneurial spirit
• Promote and drive impactful and innovative engineering solutions
• Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation
• Need more flexibility in your work week? We are happy to consider part-time, and reduced working week opportunities* (min. 32 hours per week, subject to terms and conditions)
• Parental Leave: From day one of your employment with us, we offer 22 weeks’ fully paid leave for all new parents, regardless of gender or the way you become a parent
• Care Leave: 10 days’ fully paid leave per year for colleagues who are caring for ill family members.
• Competitive compensation and benefits package and some great added perks of working in the home city of Booking.com

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.