Carina is a nonprofit technology organization founded in 2016 that operates an online home care matching platform. We connect individuals who need publicly funded home care services, including Medicaid, with home care workers seeking meaningful work and good jobs. We work closely with state and local governments, labor unions, training funds, and private employers. Since our founding, Carina has successfully facilitated thousands of matches, resulting in more than 5 million hours of home care being delivered.
Position Details
Location: Hybrid work Headquartered in Downtown Seattle, remote work possible from CA, IL, NM, NY, OR, RI and WA
Work Schedule: Our typical business hours are 8:30-5:00 Monday-Friday.
Travel Requirements: Up to 10%
Category: Full-Time, FLSA Exempt, Regular
Physical Requirements: Must be able to perform tasks that may require prolonged periods of sitting or standing, with or without reasonable accommodation.
Position Summary
Reporting to the Director of Product and Design, the Manager of Product Design will serve as a strategic bridge between product vision and execution, translating organizational strategy into cohesive user experiences across Carina's platform. This role uniquely combines deep expertise in the product design craft with advanced systems thinking, data-driven decision making, and innovation capabilities, along with leadership of the product design team. This position is critical as we evolve into an intelligent, data-driven system using nearly a decade of platform data and insights to drive innovative solutions.
The Manager of Product Design will be responsible for holistic systems thinking across the entire platform ecosystem, ensuring that all design work ladders up to our strategic goals. This person will leverage our rich dataset to identify patterns, opportunities for innovation, and data-informed design solutions that transform how providers find work and consumers find care. This person will work closely with the Director of Product and Design to operationalize the product vision and provide strategic guidance to our product teams, while managing and developing product designers.
You Will:
Strategic Systems Thinking & Innovation
- Apply advanced systems thinking to synthesize insights from users, organizational objectives, partner requirements, market conditions, and technical constraints, identifying innovative opportunities across the entire platform ecosystem;
- Develop and maintain comprehensive service blueprints and system maps that visualize the end-to-end provider and consumer journeys, revealing system-level gaps and breakthrough opportunities for innovation;
- Leverage Carina's nearly decade of platform data to identify patterns, inform strategic design decisions, and create innovative solutions that drive successful matches;
- Collaborate with the Director of Product and Design to operationalize the product vision and strategy, translating the roadmap into achievable outcomes for product teams;
- Apply domain-driven design principles by ensuring the design reflects the domain model.
Data-Driven Design Leadership
- Establish frameworks and processes for data-driven design, ensuring the product team can effectively incorporate quantitative platform data and qualitative user research into design decisions;
- Champion and model best practices in using data to inform design, modeling how to leverage analytics and research to validate hypotheses, measure impact, and iterate on solutions.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Delivery Planning
- Partner with the Director of Data and Engineering and the Manager of Software Engineering to assess the current system and determine which improvements can be achieved through incremental iteration versus which require more significant technical investment;
- Collaborate with product managers, designers, and engineers to assess and prioritize opportunities, evaluate risks, and ensure design solutions balance user needs with technical feasibility;
- Help inform the delivery roadmap by bridging design vision with engineering reality, ensuring the team can execute effectively.
Stakeholder Engagement
- Facilitate internal workshops and external sessions with labor unions, government agencies, and partner organizations to gather input, understand diverse perspectives, and drive operational collaboration;
- Synthesize complex, multi-stakeholder feedback into coherent design direction that serves providers, consumers, case managers, labor unions, and government partners;
- Collaborate with the Director of Product and Design to present strategic design recommendations and rationale to executives and external partners at partnership-level discussions;
- Translate partnership requirements and stakeholder feedback into actionable design strategies, escalating strategic trade-offs and policy decisions to the Director of Product and Design.
Design Excellence & Systems Thinking
- Ensure Carina's design system and UI standards evolve to support the growing complexity of our multi-state, multi-program platform;
- Ensure consistency, scalability, and quality across all user touchpoints while maintaining flexibility for program-specific needs;
- Maintain a user-centered approach while considering the broader service ecosystem and technical architecture;
- Create frameworks, mental models, system diagrams, and artifacts that help the organization understand complex problems and align innovative solutions.
Team Leadership & Development
- Manage product designers, providing performance feedback and career development guidance;
- Model best practices in user research, service design, facilitation, and cross-functional collaboration;
- Build and sustain design culture and quality standards;
- Foster a collaborative environment where designers can learn and grow.
From time to time, perform other duties commensurate with the level of this position.
You Have:
- 8+ years of progressive experience in product design, with demonstrated growth in scope and complexity;
- 3 + years of experience in service design, experience mapping, and domain-driven design principles;
- 2+ years of experience managing, mentoring, and developing small design teams;
- Demonstrated examples of systems thinking, data-driven decision making, and innovative solutions in complex, multi-stakeholder platforms or ecosystems;
- Proven ability to think systemically about complex platforms: mapping interdependencies, identifying leverage points, and designing holistic solutions that address root causes rather than symptoms;
- Demonstrated track record of using data and analytics to inform design decisions, measure impact, and drive continuous improvement;
- Experience driving innovation through design: identifying breakthrough opportunities and creating novel solutions that transform user experiences;
- Experience translating strategic vision into executable plans and guiding teams through implementation;
- Demonstrated success facilitating productive workshops and collaboration sessions with diverse stakeholders (internal teams, external partners, government agencies);
- Excellent communication skills with ability to present complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences;
- Experience working in Agile environments.
Key Attributes
- Demonstrate autonomy and active ownership of complex problem spaces;
- Comfortable with ambiguity and can create clarity and alignment for others;
- Intellectually curious with a drive to understand "why" and uncover innovative solutions to complex challenges;
- Energized by balancing competing needs across multiple stakeholders;
- Value collaboration and can build trust with diverse internal and external partners;
- Care deeply about the responsibility designers have for what is put into the world;
- Passionate about creating meaningful impact in the care space and improving lives for both care workers and care seekers.
It Would be Great If You Have:
- Experience with government programs, healthcare systems, or highly regulated environments;
- Background in platform or marketplace design serving multiple user types;
- Experience with system modernization or digital transformation initiatives;
- Familiarity with care contexts;
- Experience working in mission-driven or nonprofit organizations;
- Experience working with large datasets to inform product and design strategy.
Salary Range:
Benefits:
- Fully Paid Medical, Dental and Vision;
- 18 days PTO, 15 Sick days, 9 holidays, 1 floating holiday and 2 personal days;
- 401k and pension options;
- Fitness, cell phone, internet and furniture stipends.
- Mid-year summer break and end of the year winter break
Carina provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.
