Director of Product Design - Leading FinTech Company (New York)

Director of Product Design

Seeking a Director of Product Design, reporting to the VP of Product. You’ll manage two designers and stay hands‑on on high‑leverage work. You’re modeling the bar while you develop the team. You’ll help set direction for the customer experience, simplify complex problems, and drive quality through reviews, systems thinking, and close partnership with Product and Engineering. You’ll also help the team work in a modern way, including practical use of AI where it speeds up exploration and delivery, with standards that keep the product coherent and responsible.

What You’ll Do

• Keep design human‑centered across the journey: research, flows, copy moments, edge cases. Define what “good” looks like for the customer.
• Run the full design arc: pull signal from research, sketch and prototype (using whatever tools make sense, including AI‑assisted ones), run tight reviews, hand off specs engineers can build from, and stay involved through launch.
• Show up in roadmap and strategy conversations with Product. Contribute a vision and strong point of view on how we get there.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Marketing so the product feels like one brand.
• Build the boring‑but‑important stuff: how critique works, how the design system evolves, how we reuse patterns, how we review AI‑assisted work so it still meets our bar.
• Say no when something isn’t ready. That includes experiences that need clearer disclosure, better fallbacks, or a simpler path before customers see them.
• Strong data‑informed product thinking: ability to leverage quantitative data, behavioral insights, experimentation results, and customer signals to inform design decisions, identify opportunities, and continuously improve the user experience.

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of experience in a fast‑paced D2C product design environment.
• Player‑coach, you’ll manage two designers and carry IC ownership on key work; you’re credible in craft, useful in the details, and accountable for your team’s outcomes.
• Senior product design leadership: strong end‑to‑end product sense, systems thinking, and a track record shipping great work with Product and Engineering in a fast environment.
• Intellectually curious and self‑driven: you push into ambiguity, learn the domain, and move work forward without needing someone to script your week.
• Strong collaborator: Engineering, Product, and Marketing teams are excited to work with you. You build trust across functions and communicate design decisions with clarity and conviction.
• Extreme ownership mindset: you’re a self‑starter who sets the example through your design craft, raises the bar for the team, and doesn’t wait to be told what to do.
• Proven ability to make strategic decisions and hold a strong POV on what the product should look and feel like—and the communication skills to get others behind it.
• Experience using Figma and Jira as core tools of your workflow.
• Experience and genuine excitement about leveraging AI to improve design efficiency and process. Here, we use Claude Design and Cursor as part of our design workflow.

Gold Stars

• Fintech, investing, or other regulated consumer experience: comfort building UX that earns trust and holds up under scrutiny. Subscription product experience is a strong plus.
• Design systems and quality at scale: you know how patterns, critique, and consistency help teams move quickly without shipping sloppy work.
• AI in the workflow with outcomes: you’ve put AI‑assisted design workflows in place in a way that actually changed how software gets delivered—speed, clarity, handoffs, reuse.
• Experience owning user research and understanding when it should meaningfully influence the design process — knowing when deeper customer insight is necessary, when rapid iteration is more appropriate, and how to apply research thoughtfully.