Design Program Manager, Events

About the role Shopify’s Design Ops team creates the conditions for great design work to happen at speed and scale. We work horizontally across teams, disciplines, and surfaces to turn ambiguity into clarity, align the right people around the right outcomes, and build systems that help Shopify move faster without accumulating unnecessary processes. As a Design Program Manager for internal and external Events, you will own the end-to-end design stream program architecture for events at Shopify. This includes shaping operating models, driving cross-functional alignment, orchestrating timelines and resources, identifying risk, and ensuring that event experiences reflect the quality, pace, and ambition of Shopify’s design organization. This is not a coordination role. You will be expected to operate with authority, judgment, and urgency. You will understand the event design problem space deeply, build scalable systems instead of one-off fixes, and drive outcomes across creative, product, marketing, communications, production, and leadership stakeholders. You will be responsible for making complex work move well. What you’ll do Drive event programs from ambiguity to execution Own the end-to-end program management of design-led event initiatives, from intake and scoping through delivery, retrospective, and iteration. Owning the feasibility of hundreds of moving deliverables, with a lot of parallel workstreams towards a final fixed date. Translate ambiguous design event goals into clear program plans, operating rhythms, milestones, owners, and decision points. Orchestrate roadmaps, people, timelines, and resources to deliver high-quality outcomes with urgency. Create clarity across complex, cross-functional workstreams by surfacing the right signal at the right time, supporting the team on making the right trade-off decisions Build the systems, rituals, and communication structures that allow event teams to move quickly and confidently. Build scalable systems for events Develop repeatable frameworks for event design: planning, creative development, stakeholder reviews, production workflows, launch readiness, and post-event learning. Identify and subtract unnecessary processes, meetings, approvals, and toil that slow teams down. Create reusable tools, templates, operating models, and decision-making mechanisms that improve speed and quality over time. Design lightweight systems that help teams do the right things, not all things. Build for Shopify’s long-term event program health, not just immediate delivery needs. Lead cross-functional alignment Drive coordination across Design, Product, Marketing, Communications, Agency, Leadership, and other relevant teams. Make alignment happen by clarifying ownership, dependencies, tradeoffs, risks, and decisions. Influence through evidence, logic, strong judgment, and a clear point of view. Identify when teams are misaligned, when decisions are stuck, or when scope is drifting, and intervene with a proposed path forward. Clear and calm communication, that can escalate effectively, ensuring leadership and partners have the right level of visibility without creating noise. Maintain a clear view of priorities, dependencies, and capacity across the event portfolio. Create a clear intake process, with visibility for the whole team. Use AI as a core tool Use AI as an everyday tool of trade to improve planning, synthesis, documentation, scenario modeling, workflow design, and decision support. Identify opportunities to use AI to reduce manual toil, improve program visibility, and accelerate event operations. Model AI-enabled ways of working for partners and collaborators. What success looks like Event programs move faster, with fewer surprises and clearer ownership. Teams understand priorities, dependencies, risks, and decisions without needing excessive meetings or process. Stakeholders trust that you will do what you say, when you say it. Ambiguous event work becomes structured, actionable, and outcome-oriented. Teams around you are better, faster, and more focused because of the systems you create. You reduce complexity by subtracting unnecessary steps, clarifying decision paths, and preventing toil from accumulating. Event programs become more repeatable, scalable, and strategically connected to Shopify’s goals. Escalation ends with you: you surface risk early, propose solutions, and own outcomes end to end. Detail and tracker rigor. A 1000-plus-item tracker only works if it's trustworthy. If the tracker lies, everything downstream does too. What you bring Significant experience in program management, design program management, creative operations, event operations, or related roles. Real print and fabrication knowledge. Prepress, dielines, materials, lead times, proofing cycles, and what "ready for vendor" actually means. Enough to build honest timelines and clear production checks without pulling a designer in. Proven ability to lead complex, cross-functional programs with many stakeholders, dependencies, and moving parts. Experience managing event-related workstreams such as creative development, production timelines, content programming, experiential design, launch moments, executive reviews, or partner coordination. Agency and vendor management. Tracking scope against the SOW, holding the agency to its input deadlines, and running fabrication with vendors through their proof cycles. Strong systems thinking and ability to design lightweight operating models that scale. Excellent communication skills, with the ability to create clarity for executives, creative teams, production partners, and cross-functional stakeholders. A bias toward action, urgency, and resourcefulness. A track record of reducing complexity, removing blockers, and improving how teams work. Comfort using AI tools to accelerate thinking, planning, documentation, and execution. A strong point of view on how great event programs should operate — and the ability to evolve that point of view through evidence and learning.