Director Design

Job Description

About the Client:

Our client is focused on improving employee financial wellness, and their platform goes beyond simple on-demand pay. Their platform combines flexible payout options with financial education, rewards, and engagement tools that help employers boost retention and satisfaction.

The Opportunity:

Our client is at an inflection point.

They are transforming from a scrappy Series A startup into a maturing Series B company.

Their product design has gotten them here, but to get where they're going, it's time to level up.

Your mission will be to elevate design from good to GREAT!

This means building the operational maturity, systems thinking, and design excellence that transforms the product experience.

The scope of the role will include leading 3 product designers who are ready to grow.

You'll be the voice of design at the leadership table, championing craft, advocating for the user, and ensuring design has the strategic influence that builds financial products people trust.

This is a builder role.

You will be hands-on (15-20% of your time), but your real impact will be in how you develop your designers, how you influence product strategy, and how you establish the processes and standards that enable our client to move fast without compromising quality.

The Skills/Requirement Needed to Succeed:

DESIGN EXCELLENCE & LEADERSHIP PRESENCE

• Exceptional design taste with high personal standards that translate to team output
• Strong enough to be the credible voice of design at the product leadership table
• Natural thought leader with directional thinking and a point of view on product strategy

PEOPLE LEADERSHIP

• Experience directly managing 2-5 direct reports

DESIGN SYSTEMS MASTERY

• Must have evolved a design system
• Brings operational maturity to design systems thinking

PLATFORM & PRODUCT DIVERSITY

• Experience across both web AND mobile platforms
• Exposure to both B2B and B2C is valuable

BUILDER & OPERATOR MINDSET

• Self-starter who can build processes and operations without heavy infrastructure
• Comfortable working at startup/scale-up pace
• Experience transitioning companies from Series A → Series B maturity
• More operator than designer today, but still hands-on (15-20% IC work)

FINANCIAL PRODUCTS EXPERIENCE (STRONG PREFERENCE)

• Deep understanding of creating trust within financial products
• If from large enterprise (bank/insurance): must also have scrappy startup experience

Martyn Bassett Associates:

Martyn Bassett Associates is a team of recruiters solving the ambitious goals of startups and scale-ups by recruiting world-class sales, marketing, and product management talent who deliver growth and scale. We’ve helped over 1500 candidates land their next big opportunity at companies like Shopify, Extreme Networks, Wattpad, Loopio, Readdle, ClearCo, Workleap, Invicti, Resolve Pay, The Herjavec Group, GE Energy, GE Health, Enable, RBC Ventures, Unibuddy, Cognota, Thalmic Labs (now Google Glass), Eloqua (now Oracle Marketing Cloud) to name a few.

AI assisted in drafting this posting. Our recruiters personally review all applications.