# Head of Design

**Company:** [Opto](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/opto)
**Location:** New York, NY, San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Product Design
**Salary:** $250k – $290k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** Product Design, Design Systems, Ai-Native Design, B2B Product Design, Fintech, User Research, Design Leadership, Product Strategy, Zero-To-One Product Development, Workflow Design
**Posted:** 2026-05-20

> Own product design as a function at a fintech startup building private markets software. Hands-on leadership role building and leading the design team while directly designing critical product surfaces.

## Job Description

## What you’ll do
- Personally lead design on our most critical product surfaces, setting the standard for quality and usability.
- Bring a clear point of view on designing AI-native products, including how to build trust, transparency, and effective human-AI interaction.
- Define how product experiences are built at Opto, from onboarding through core workflows, establishing principles for simplicity, clarity, and trust.
- Work alongside product and engineering to define direction, challenge decisions, and ensure we build coherent, end-to-end experiences.
- Push teams to simplify, cut scope, and focus on what actually drives user value.
- Bring design into strategic decisions early, shaping roadmap, prioritization, and how we approach problems.
- Establish design systems, patterns, and practices that scale across the product and compound over time.
- Lead and grow the design team, setting a high bar for craft, thinking, and execution.

## What success looks like
- Design consistently shapes product decisions, not just execution.
- Core workflows feel coherent, intuitive, and built for how our users actually work.
- The product has a clear, unified interaction model across surfaces.
- Teams ship high-quality experiences with a strong focus on outcomes.

## Required Skills
- Strong product sense and high quality bar. You know what good looks like and push teams to reach it.
- Comfort with ambiguity. You create clarity in evolving environments and help teams move forward.
- AI-native mindset. You've incorporated AI deeply into your workflow and have a point of view on how design's role is evolving.

## Background
- 10+ Years of product design experience.
- Zero to one product design experience. You've built products or major features from scratch and can articulate what you shipped, what you cut, and why.
- Experience contributing to or reaching product-market fit. You understand how design drives learning, iteration, and adoption.
- B2B product experience, ideally in fintech or data-heavy environments with complex workflows.
- Experience leading designers, or a strong senior IC who has operated at a leadership level and is ready to own a function.

## Bonus
- Fintech or private markets experience.
- Founder or early-stage experience.
- Experience building or shaping discovery and research practices.

## Compensation and Benefits
- Cash salary range: $250,000-$290,000 dependent on skills, experience and expected contribution.
- Significant equity
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Unlimited PTO
- Retirement savings plan (401k)
- Learning, Fitness and Commuter stipends
- Paid Holidays

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/cc27009d-ab5d-4c6a-be8c-c5365507801f
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