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Building the operational backbone of Pinterest's design system

Design Program Manager & Strategic Producer • Pinterest • Nov 2024 - Feb 2026

📈

90%

design system adoption

📉

80%

reduction in admin overhead

⏱️

30%

faster request turnaround

🗓️

<24h

support response time

Context

Pinterest's Gestalt Design System supports design and engineering across all core mobile and web surfaces. I joined as the team's operational lead, responsible for turning a talented under-structured team into a high-functioning system with predictable, repeatable delivery.

The problem

Priorities were unclear, component tracking was fragmented across platforms, and cross-functional requests arrived with no structure or accountability. There was no unified operational view for Design and Engineering leadership, and no system for managing the volume of work across five scrum teams. The team was operating on instinct rather than infrastructure.

My approach

I treated the team itself as a product. That meant starting with discovery — auditing existing workflows, interviewing team members, and mapping the full operational landscape before touching a single process. Then I built for durability, not just speed: every system I introduced was documented, automated where possible, and designed to run without me.

The work

Jira Automation Framework - designed and deployed automation that eliminated 80% of repetitive admin tasks and created a Slack-to-Jira pipeline for 100% request auditability

Capacity Planning Model - developed a data-driven model optimizing designer allocation across all 5 scrum teams

On-Call Rotation + Support Pipeline - redesigned the support model, cutting response time from one full week to under 24 hours

DocSite Delivery - orchestrated the cross-functional delivery of the Gestalt Documentation Site, owning scope and tracking across Design, Content, and Engineering

Cross-Functional Governance Model - established a structure that drove 90% adoption and eliminated design debt across core surfaces while maintaining A11y compliance

Design-to-Engineering Handoff Convention - authored an end-to-end protocol transitioning fragmented one-off requests into structured, multi-platform batch releases (see below)

Restructured intake and prioritization through design, cross-platform engineering build, accessibility QA, compliance sign-off, and deployment.

Results

Adoption reached 90% across core mobile and web surfaces

Administrative overhead dropped by 80%

Design request turnaround improved by 30%

Support ticketing time fell from one week to under 24 hours

None of these outcomes were accidental, each one traces directly back to a specific system, process, or automation put in place to make it inevitable.

What this shows

This engagement required operating at every level simultaneously: strategic enough to design a governance model, technical enough to build Jira automation, and people-focused enough to bring five scrum teams along for the change. The 90% adoption rate is the headline, but the real win was building something the team still relies on.

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