Sara Haragold

On the Director of Design Operations role

I'm excited to be applying for the Director of Design Operations role, and since I know Etsy values individuality, allow me to tell you what you won't find on my resume. I'm constitutionally incapable of not jumping in and building. When my twins wanted to practice their letters and numbers, I didn't download an app, I vibecoded a few, built around what they were actually curious about, and put them online. When a party needs planning, it ends up with a fully custom scavenger hunt with a backstory that makes the experience richer. I'm currently in the process of building a tool that allows NYC commuters to test proposed subway routes from apps like Citymapper against their own routes when they're in a rush and think they have a better way to get where they're going. That same wiring is what makes me good at my work: I find where a team is losing hours to friction and I go build the thing that fixes it, whether that's a briefing template, a capacity system, or actual software. I build for the people using the system, because I've usually been the person using it.

At OLIVER I set the operating model for a 7,000-person agency's design and creative work, how it came in and how the team ran, and grew an in-house studio to roughly 130 people, about the scale of your Design and Research org. When manual quality checks started eating people's days, I taught myself to automate them, and that became Creatiq, an AI tool I designed and coded solo. So when this role calls for AI training and enablement for the design team, that's not theoretical for me. I've built the tools, and I know how to bring a team along to actually use them.

From the outside, what stands out is how fast Etsy is moving on this, with discovery getting rebuilt around conversation rather than keyword search. In my experience, that kind of pace is when operations matters most, when shared ways of working are what keep speed from turning into chaos. That's the kind of problem I'm drawn to, and it looks like a live one here. It's the part I'd be most excited to dig into.

I'll be straight about how I work, too: I have no patience for processes that are only there to look rigorous. My goal is to find the daily busywork that's only there for show and redesign it so you keep the accountability and give people back the time. I add structure where it earns its keep and cut it where it doesn't. Etsy is a company built on makers, and I came up as one, so building the system that lets a design team make its best work feels like exactly the right place to point all of this.

I'd love to talk about what the first ninety days could look like.

Best,

Sara Haragold

Design Operations Leader