Lead Product Designer

About the role

Since 2014, the mission-driven team at the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has helped fuel the tremendous growth of the Stellar blockchain network, an open-source platform that operates at high-scale today. Developers and companies around the world build on it, and the SDF team is expanding to support the rapidly growing and changing Stellar ecosystem. We are looking for a Lead Product Designer to lead design across SDF’s products and to raise the bar on craft for the whole team.

Responsibilities

• Ramp on our products, design system, and roadmap; partner with PMs and engineers; and start contributing directly to active design work.
• Own the design vision for key product areas, establish how the team works (including AI-assisted workflows), and support the growth of the designer you manage.
• Set and champion a clear product design vision aligned with company goals and brand values.
• Lead by example as our most senior designer — contributing directly to our most important projects with exceptional visual and interaction craft.
• Manage, mentor, and grow another product designer; provide thoughtful feedback and career development.
• Maintain and scale our design system to ensure consistency and speed across products.
• Leverage AI design and prototyping tools to increase the team’s leverage and the quality and velocity of what you ship.
• Partner closely with Product and Engineering to ship pixel-perfect, user-centered experiences.
• Conduct user research and usability testing to validate decisions, and champion user-centered design across the organization.

Requirements

• 7+ years of product design experience with a strong portfolio of shipped, end-to-end work.
• Exceptional visual and interaction design skills and a critical eye for detail.
• Experience managing or mentoring other designers (formal management a plus).
• Demonstrated use of AI tools to accelerate and elevate design work.
• Expert knowledge of modern design tools (Figma, Framer, etc.) and experience building and scaling design systems.
• Strong communication; you can present, influence, and align stakeholders at all levels.
• A strong understanding of user-centered design, with experience in research and usability testing.

Qualifications

• If on-chain / crypto / fintech design experience.
• You have built or scaled a design team.
• You prototype with code or AI tools (Framer, v0, and similar).
• You are a founder or have 0→1 experience.

Benefits

We offer competitive pay with a base salary range for this position of $170,000 - $235,000 depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, we offer lumen-denominated grants along with the following perks and benefits:

• USA Benefits/Perks: Competitive health, dental & vision coverage with most plans covered at 100% for the employee + any dependents.
• Flexible time off + 15 company holidays including a company-wide holiday break.
• Generous paid parental leave for all parents, plus paid pregnancy disability leave for birthing parents.
• Gym reimbursement ($80 per month).
• Life & ADD (up to $50K).
• Short & Long term disability.
• 401K with 4% match.
• Health & Dependent Care FSA Accounts.
• Commuter benefits with $250/month employer contribution.
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with monthly employer contribution.
• Family building benefits through Kindbody.
• Wellbeing benefits (One Medical, Rightway, Headspace).
• L&D budget of $1,500/year.
• Daily lunch and snacks in office.
• Company retreats.