Sr. Product Design Manager – HRIS | India Design Site Lead

About the role

At Rippling Design is central to our mission to free smart people to tackle hard problems. We build products that automate the operational complexity of running a businessfrom HR and payroll to IT and financeso our customers can focus on what matters a world of fragmented outdated systems were creating a modern unified platform where thoughtful design turns complexity into clarity and confidence.

As the Senior Product Design Manager for HRIS and India Site Lead you will lead a team of 6 designers responsible for Ripplings HCM and HRIS products while serving as the site lead for the broader India design organization supporting an additional 5 designers across Payroll Finance and Platform. Youll play a key role in growing design talent strengthening team culture and partnering with cross-functional leaders to raise the quality and impact of the organization.

Your team owns products at the heart of how companies manage their workforce from core employee records to onboarding compliance and global workforce operations. Youll lead the evolution of these experiences while helping define Ripplings AI-first future designing intelligent workflows and agentic experiences that automate HR work at scale.

Success in this role requires a leader who can navigate highly complex product domains think in systems and balance long-term platform strategy with exceptional product execution. Youll empower your team to solve challenging customer problems raise the bar for design craft and shape experiences that millions of employees and HR administrators rely on every day.

What you will do

• Lead and grow a team of product designers across the HCM product suite driving high-impact work across HR Talent Benefits and Workforce Management.
• Design and deliver complex business-critical experiences that are intuitive scalable and trustworthy across global and regulatory contexts.
• Define and drive AI-native experiences that radically simplify administrator and employee workflowsleveraging automation intelligent defaults and agentic systems to reduce operational overhead.
• Set a high bar for craft quality and executionmentoring designers providing actionable feedback and creating an environment where designers do the best work of their careers.
• Drive end-to-end product thinkingfrom early problem definition and research through execution and iterationacross both 01 initiatives and mature product areas.
• Partner closely with Product Engineering and cross-functional stakeholders to define product strategy prioritize initiatives and deliver against ambitious roadmaps.
• Establish and reinforce systems thinking across the teamcreating patterns and frameworks that scale across products and ensure consistency across Ripplings platform.
• Translate complex operational compliance and workforce challenges into simple elegant user experiences for both administrators and employees.
• Champion a deep understanding of customers especially in high-complexity domains like global HR compliance and hourly workforce management.
• Contribute to and evolve Ripplings design system ensuring consistency and quality across surfaces while enabling teams to move quickly.
• Drive alignment across teams working on interdependent systems ensuring cohesive experiences across HRIS Time and the broader Rippling platform.
• Serve as the India Site Lead for Design fostering a vibrant local office culture driving team collaboration and providing site-wide operational leadership.

What you will need

• 10 years of professional product design experience with 5 years leading and managing design teams.
• Proven track record of delivering high-impact customer-facing products in complex domains such as HCM/HRIS fintech enterprise software or workforce management.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity and large problem spaces turning complex systems into intuitive user-friendly experiences.
• Strong systems thinking with experience designing across interconnected products or platforms and creating scalable patterns and frameworks.
• Experience defining and shipping AI-native or automation-driven product experiences including intelligent workflows decision support or agentic systems that reduce user effort.
• Experience owning and delivering end-to-end product designfrom strategy and roadmap definition through execution and QA.
• Proven ability to lead mentor and grow designers across different levels of experience raising the overall quality bar of the team.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence cross-functional partners and drive alignment across teams.
• Strong product sense and judgment with the ability to balance user needs business goals and technical constraints.
• A deep customer focus with experience translating real-world workflows (e.g. HR operations scheduling compliance) into effective product experiences.
• A bias toward action and ownershipyou thrive in fast-paced environments and are comfortable driving clarity and direction in evolving problem spaces.
• Strong leadership presence with the ability to manage site operations and cultivate a high-performing design community in the India office.

If you dont necessarily meet all of these requirements we still encourage you to apply. Skills transfer in unexpected ways and diverse perspectives often lead to the most innovative solutions.

Required Experience:

Manager