Design & Research Operations Lead
Role: Design & Research Operations Lead
Location: Abu Dhabi
Role Purpose:
The Senior Design & Research Operations Coordinator is responsible for improving the effectiveness, visibility, and scalability of the Design & Experience function by managing design operations, research operations, tools, capacity, workflows, reporting, and governance.
The role acts as the central operational lead for the design organization, working closely with the Head of Design & Experience, designers, researchers, product teams, vendors, and delivery partners to ensure work is planned, distributed, tracked, and delivered efficiently.
Key Accountabilities of the role:
Own design team capacity planning and work distribution, ensuring workload is visible, balanced, and aligned to business priorities.
Manage Jira workflows and operational boards, including sprint planning, intake management, status tracking, workflow administration, and reporting.
Provide capacity, utilization, and delivery dashboards that give leadership clear visibility of team workload, priorities, risks, and resource needs.
Coordinate design and research tool administration, including Jira, Figma, Confluence, Microsoft 365 access, license management, renewals, and payment coordination.
Support budget tracking and vendor management for tools, agencies, research partners, procurement activities, contracts, and renewals.
Lead research operations support, including participant recruitment, research scheduling, logistics, governance, consent management, repository management, and customer panel maintenance.
Manage design team onboarding and offboarding, ensuring employees, contractors, interns, and coordinators have the right access, documentation, tools, and process guidance.
Maintain operational documentation in Confluence, including ways of working, workflow guidance, templates, governance standards, and process updates.
Support asset and design system governance, ensuring shared files, templates, libraries, and operational standards remain organized and accessible.
Coordinate with vendors and agencies to support smooth execution of design and research activities, including timelines, access, delivery tracking, and budget control.
Identify opportunities for operational improvement and recommend practical ways to improve team efficiency, utilization, reporting, and governance.
Guide interns or junior coordinators, helping them follow team processes and maintain high standards of operational execution.
Specialist Skills / Technical Knowledge, Technical Competencies Required for this role:
Proven experience in Design Operations and Research Operations within a product, design, digital, or enterprise environment.
Advanced knowledge of Jira, including workflow administration, sprint planning, capacity management, intake tracking, and dashboards.
Strong working knowledge of Figma, including workspace administration, team access, license management, file organization, and design asset governance.
Proficiency in Confluence for documentation, knowledge management, process governance, and team ways of working.
Strong knowledge of Microsoft 365, including Teams, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and SharePoint for operational coordination and reporting.
Experience in resource forecasting and workload planning, with the ability to translate capacity data into clear recommendations.
Understanding of Agile delivery practices and how design, research, product, and technology teams collaborate across sprints.
Experience with procurement, renewals, vendors, and budgets for tools, software, agencies, and research partners.
Knowledge of research operations processes, including participant recruitment, scheduling, logistics, governance, consent management, repository maintenance, and customer panels.
Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to coordinate across design, product, technology, procurement, finance, and vendor teams.