Manager Product Design

Job Title
:
Manager Product Design

Location
:
Hybrid (Austin, TX)

At Bus Patrol, we’re on a mission to make school transportation safer for children and communities. As a leader in AI-powered safety solutions, we bring cutting‑edge technology—AI, machine learning, and IoT—to school buses across North America. We’re the most trusted stop‑arm safety program globally, delivering transparency and safety  short, this is purpose driven work that measurably changes behavior in the communities we serve.

The Opportunity:

If you’re a design leader who thrives at the intersection of AI, edge computing, and mobile connectivity, this is your opportunity to shape the future of automated safety technology. We are seeking an experienced Manager of Product Design to lead our team of 2 embedded Designers across our Product Teams, while still contributing hands‑on to high‑impact design initiatives. Our ideal candidate can drive a unifying and up‑leveling our experiences while delivering unmatched business outcomes.

This will involve driving a cohesive visual design language across our Products suite, partnering with Marketing and Branding and acting as a player coach to dive deep on design work.

Reporting to the Director of Product and Design, you’ll partner with the Research and Product teams to support the roadmap for Bus Patrol’s complex set of stakeholders and users across our AI driven experiences, striking a balance in the complex space of building trust, serving delightful experiences and meeting measurable business outcomes.

• Drive a culture of rapid, iterative design thinking process using a variety of tools as appropriate, partnering with top notch researchers, fostering Design driven evaluative research, low and high fidelity design and prototyping
• Align Bus Patrol’s Product suite under a cohesive and unified visual design language through our Design System.
• Understand design for high trust AI supported experiences and when not to use AI.
• Grow a design organization founded on continuous improvement outcomes.
• Understand and link in KPI impact driven outcomes to design efforts
  · Drive speed to market.

Key Outcomes:

This role is critical to driving user centric, intuitive applications for both our internal and external stakeholders (target users). Success in 12 months for this role include:

• Drive delightful user experiences that deliver exceptional outcomes, especially in new products including internal cabin safety monitoring for our Transportation Directors persona.
• Ensure intuitive, high trust applications of Ai in the unique business to government space
• Foster a generative culture of psychological safety within the design team and build design as a practice and skillset across the company
• Unify our design language through thoughtful, iterative improvements centering on the Design System
  · Prepare us to be ready for new use cases and verticals.

Responsibilities

User Experience Strategy:

• Define and champion the user experience strategy for Bus Patrol products, ensuring alignment with business goals and user needs.
• Thoughtfully partner with Research to distribute research efforts to ensure rapid, high quality happens research often

Design Leadership:

• Lead, mentor, and inspire a high-performing team of UX/UI designers.
• Provide constructive feedback, guidance, and support to designers at all levels.
• Foster a collaborative and inclusive design culture within the team and across departments.
• Advocate for user-centered design principles throughout the product development lifecycle.

Design Execution:

• Define and maintain design systems and style guides to ensure consistency and efficiency across products.
• Participate in design critiques and provide valuable feedback to the team.
• Ensure the quality and consistency of design deliverables, including wireframes, mockups, and prototypes.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, and other stakeholders to bring products to market successfully.

Communication &

Collaboration:

• Effectively communicate design decisions and rationale to stakeholders at all levels.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with cross-functional teams, including engineering, marketing, and sales.
• Represent Bus…