Design Director (Hands-On IC)
About The Position
Athlete to Athlete (A2A) is the leading technology platform connecting youth athletes with verified college athletes for online coaching and mentorship. Our mission is to build driven, confident, and resilient people through sports. Weâre building a category-defining product that could serve 60M+ youth athlete families, and weâre looking for a hands-on Design Director to own and elevate the end-to-end design experience. This is a player-coach role: you will define the design vision for the company and personally execute the work. Youâll spend most of your time designing flows, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity UI while laying the foundation for a future design team. If you thrive in fast-paced startup environments, love turning ambiguity into clarity, and want massive ownership over a product with real-world impact, this role is for you. As Design Director, you will lead design across the A2A platform; Owning UX, UI, and visual direction while operating as the companyâs lead individual contributor. Youâll partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to shape what we build, why we build it, and how it comes to life.Youâll establish high design standards, build scalable systems, and ship experiences that feel intuitive, polished, and human without losing startup speed. We strongly prefer an onsite model (3â5 days/week) in our Santa Monica office.
Requirements
- 10+ years of product design experience, including 5+ years in lead roles
- Proven success designing consumer products in fast-moving, product-led companies
- Strong portfolio demonstrating world-class craft and clear business impact
- Deep experience with Figma (components, auto-layout, prototyping, design systems)
- Experience across subscription products, marketplaces, consumer apps, and/or video
- Strong understanding of design systems, UX strategy, and design-engineering collaboration
- Experience designing responsive web and mobile experiences
- Comfort working in ambiguity and iterating quickly
- Deeply understands and embraces that we are building experiences used by minors, where trust, safety, and emotional impact matter deeply
- A strategic thinker who can zoom out to vision and zoom in to pixels
- Comfortable in scrappy environments where process is lightweight and impact is high
- Opinionated, but highly collaborative
- A builder first - energized by shipping, iterating, and owning outcome
Nice To Haves
- Fluency in motion and interaction design (Lottie, After Effects, ProtoPie, etc. a plus)
- Understanding of AI-driven UX and conversational interfaces is a plus
- Bonus: Passion for youth sports, college athletics, or mentorship
Responsibilities
- Own and execute end-to-end product design across web and mobile (wireframes â prototypes â high-fidelity â production-ready assets)
- Serve as the lead individual contributor for all UI/UX work
- Define and evolve A2Aâs design vision, principles, and product experience
- Translate user needs and business goals into elegant, simple, and scalable solutions
- Design experiences across our full ecosystem: Youth Athletes, Guardians, Mentors, and Internal Teams
- Partner deeply with Product and Engineering on roadmap shaping, problem framing, and solution definition
- Build and maintain a scalable design system that enables speed, consistency, and accessibility
- Balance craft, usability, and velocity knowing when to perfect and when to ship
- Advocate for the user through strong storytelling, prototypes, and clear rationale
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
Education Level
No Education Listed
Number of Employees
501-1,000 employees
