Product Design Manager

Sage is on a mission to improve care and quality of life for older adults, starting with those residing in senior living facilities. Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among adults over 65. And yet, fall prevention and emergency response systems for older adults are archaic and ineffective. At Sage we've built a more modern way of understanding when older adults need help, including methods for residents to alert caregivers when in need of help, and corresponding software for caregivers to triage response. Our company mission is to create a product that our client counterparts love, and this role is a key part of that objective.

Sage is a small, tight team of ambitious, multi-disciplinary entrepreneurs. We are a software-enabled, mission-driven company, and are focused only on the problems that are central to achieving that mission. At Sage, we work hard and fast but also know that to build a truly important company, we need to treat our work as a marathon, and not a sprint. The journey matters.

As the Product Design Manager of the Care Platform, you will lead the design vision, team, and execution behind the core experience caregivers use every day. You’ll guide and grow a small team of designers while also maintaining hands-on involvement in crafting end-to-end product experiences. This role sits at the intersection of user advocacy, workflow design, and cross-functional leadership—requiring the ability to turn complex, high-stakes care scenarios into simple, intuitive, and scalable product solutions.

You’ll collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Clinical, and Implementation teams to shape the future of our platform. Reporting to the Head of Design, you will help define the structure of Sage’s design practice, improve our processes, and raise the bar for craftsmanship, clarity, and user understanding across the company.

Design Leadership & Strategy

• Drive the experience vision and design strategy for the Care Platform, ensuring it is intuitive, scalable, and aligned with business outcomes.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Clinical, and Ops leadership to shape roadmaps and influence product direction.
• Create clarity in ambiguous spaces by defining information architecture, workflows, and user journeys across complex care environments.
• Raise the quality bar for our design system, interaction patterns, and UX craft.

People Leadership

• Manage, mentor, and grow a small team of product designers with a focus on skill development, user-centered thinking, and high-quality execution.
• Provide clear feedback, set expectations, and run rituals that help designers do the best work of their careers.
• Foster a collaborative, psychologically safe environment where research, craft, and outcomes matter.

Hands-on Product Design

• Work closely with your team to ship high-quality product experiences—balancing leadership with hands-on design work (approximately 50/50).
• Lead critical projects yourself when needed: mapping workflows, creating prototypes, running usability studies, or designing complex interfaces.
• Partner with Product to shape MVP definitions, validate concepts with real users, and measure impact.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Influence

• Work with product managers to translate user insights, operational constraints, and business goals into clear design strategies and product direction.
• Build strong relationships with clinical, implementation, and analytics teams to deeply understand the realities of care environments.
• Facilitate working sessions that bring clarity to complex goals—turning divergent inputs into cohesive product decisions.
• Champion the voice of caregivers and residents across the organization, ensuring their needs drive our product decisions.

Minimum Qualifications

• 6–10+ years of product design experience, with at least 1–3 years of people management
• Strong portfolio demonstrating systems-level thinking, complex workflow design, and high-quality shipped products.
• Experience designing for multi-step workflows, operational/enterprise tools, or environments with multiple user types.
• Proven ability to coach designers in craft, process, communication, and research-driven decision-making.
• Mastery of Figma and modern design tools, with excellent interaction design and visual design fundamentals.
• Exceptional communication skills—able to drive alignment, present design rationale clearly, and work effectively with cross-functional partners.
• Comfort working in a fast-paced, early-stage environment with ambiguity and evolving priorities.
• Willing and able to travel domestically for field visits and customer research.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in healthcare or regulated verticals.
• Experience building or managing a design system.
• Prior startup experience or experience working in cross-functional product triads.

Benefits and Pay

Our headquarters are located in New York City's Union Square. We believe in cross team collaboration. We think good ideas can come from anyone, and we've designed our processes to encourage participation from all. While we take our mission seriously, we don't take ourselves too seriously. We like to host offsites, outings, and team meals where we can connect as people, not just as colleagues. We offer office lunch and a fully stocked snack bar. While we are an in office culture, we allow up to 2 remote days per week.

Our benefits package for employees includes competitive base compensation along with stock options. The expected annual salary range for this role is $180,000 - 210,000 USD, depending upon the job level, which will depend on your level of expertise, your experience, and your qualifications. We also provide fully-paid health and dental insurance coverage for all of our employees, along with other health benefits including vision insurance, membership to premium primary and urgent care, and online medical health providers. We also have a take as you need time off policy, in addition to 7 paid holidays and a company wide winter break during the holidays.

EEO Statement

Sage is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

This policy applies to all employment practices within our organization, including hiring, recruiting, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, leave of absence, compensation, benefits, training, and apprenticeship. Sage makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.