Design Program Manager, Product Experience

$103,500 - $155,295/Yr

Cardinal Health - Topeka, KS

Full-time - Mid Level

Topeka, KS

Merchant Wholesalers, Nondurable Goods

About the position

The Design Program Manager at Cardinal Health will play a crucial role in enhancing the Product Experience organization by establishing effective processes, improving operational excellence, and fostering collaboration across teams. This position focuses on enabling others to deliver high-quality experiences in a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, characterized by new service models and technologies.

Responsibilities

• Establish predictable, repeatable processes to help leaders and contributors prioritize, plan, and execute multiple parallel projects.
• Develop routines and systems to track and balance initiatives, capacity, work estimation, scheduling, and resource alignment.
• Proactively assess risk, raise flags, facilitate decision-making, and resolve issues before they become problems for the larger team(s).
• Capture, analyze, and aggregate UX, customer, and business metrics to measure impact at the project, portfolio, and organizational levels.
• Provide visibility and accurate reporting on organizational status, resource utilization, team performance, and project/program health when and where needed.
• Work with Product Experience and cross-functional teams to adopt and leverage standards, best practices, and definitions of good & done.
• Partner with product, engineering, and business partners to share design's working model and ensure a smooth product development process.
• Manage project and operational expenses, focusing on scope, time allocation, and funding.
• Support the hiring and onboarding of employees, manage contractors and vendors, and strategically balance attrition.
• Drive procurement, implementation, and adoption of tools (design, research, and project management) to empower our organization, work more effectively, and build upon each other's efforts.
• Streamline communications to ensure information and knowledge flows freely within our team, partners, and broader Cardinal Health.
• Own key programs, team rituals, and continuous-improvement efforts.
• Keep a finger on the cultural pulse of the Product Experience team and actively participate in shaping it, focusing on morale, attrition, unspoken feedback, and overall well-being.

Requirements

• 8-10+ years' experience in program, project, and/or operations management within a product design organization and/or creative agency, preferred.
• Bachelor's degree in related field, or equivalent work experience, preferred.
• Successfully created and managed a wide range of design-related processes, resources, programs, and improvements that have delivered measurable results.
• Experience working directly with designers, researchers, and strategists.
• Extensive knowledge of the inner workings of product, design and engineering teams from discovery through delivery, and can confidently think like, reason with, and proxy for a design leader.
• Experience overseeing complex cross-functional programs across multiple portfolios.
• High attention to detail and proven ability to manage multiple, competing priorities simultaneously with minimal supervision.
• Passion for owning and driving best practices for design teams and work that improves cross functional ways of working.
• Strong knowledge of project management tools and methodologies (Agile to Waterfall).
• Deep understanding and knowledge of human-centered design process.
• Strong skills in gathering and synthesizing information and can confidently communicate across teams and levels across the organization.
• Experience using data to identify problems and communicate solutions with measurable results.
• Deep experience in gathering feedback and data to deliver continual business and operational improvement.
• Engages with candor and empathy while sharing learnings from individual and team experiences to drive continual improvement for self and others.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills to effectively convey design principles, system updates, and project status to various audiences.
• Comfortable dealing with ambiguity and knowing how to move forward to solve open-ended challenges independently.

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision coverage
• Paid time off plan
• Health savings account (HSA)
• 401k savings plan
• Access to wages before pay day with myFlexPay
• Flexible spending accounts (FSAs)
• Short- and long-term disability coverage
• Work-Life resources
• Paid parental leave
• Healthy lifestyle programs