Head of Design

Photon•New York, NY

10d•$190,000 - $240,000

About The Position

Photon is seeking a Head of Design to establish the company's aesthetic, functionality, and brand presence. This senior leadership role requires expertise in product design, brand management, creative direction, and storytelling. The Head of Design will be responsible for the quality of the user experience across all platforms (patient, provider, pharmacy, partner, and internal) and will develop the visual identity that conveys trust, modernity, and uniqueness for Photon. The role involves simplifying complex healthcare prescription processes into understandable and trustworthy experiences for users. Collaboration with the CEO, Product, Engineering, Commercial, and Operations teams is essential for defining product development, functionality, and communication strategies. The position demands a high level of taste, strong product intuition, and the ability to transition seamlessly between patient UX and enterprise-level storytelling while maintaining clarity. The ideal candidate will be expected to elevate design standards while remaining focused on business objectives, including product delivery, sales support, system development, and clear communication of the company's vision.

Requirements

8+ years of design experience across product design, brand, or creative roles, with meaningful ownership of a product or design function.
Exceptional product design craft, with a portfolio showing simple solutions to complex workflows.
Strong visual taste and the ability to create coherent systems across product, web, sales collateral, and brand expression.
Experience designing for B2B, healthcare, fintech, marketplaces, infrastructure, or other complex systems.
Ability to move between strategy and execution: you can define the north star, then make the pixels, words, and flows better.
Strong systems thinking, including experience building or evolving design systems.
Comfort working directly with engineers and product leads in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment.
Excellent communication skills, especially the ability to explain design decisions to technical, commercial, and executive audiences.
High ownership and low ego; you can raise the bar without slowing the company down.
Experience using AI tools to speed up exploration, prototyping, production, or creative workflows.

Nice To Haves

Experience as the first or most senior design hire at an early or growth-stage startup.
Experience designing patient, provider, clinical, or health system workflows.
Experience with enterprise sales, customer storytelling, or technical product marketing.
Ability to create diagrams, demos, prototypes, or motion/video assets that make complex products easier to understand.
Experience hiring or managing designers, agencies, freelancers, or creative partners.
Familiarity with accessibility, privacy, compliance, or trust-sensitive design environments.

Responsibilities

Own Photon’s design function across product, brand, marketing, and customer-facing storytelling.
Define and evolve the design system for patient, provider, pharmacy, partner, and internal workflows.
Lead product design for core experiences, including patient prescription routing, provider prescribing workflows, partner integrations, and marketplace surfaces.
Translate complex healthcare infrastructure into simple, intuitive, high-trust user experiences.
Partner with Product and Engineering to shape roadmap decisions, scope work, and make tradeoffs between speed, craft, and complexity.
Create the visual and narrative system that helps Photon explain itself to customers, partners, investors, and candidates.
Raise the bar on product quality, interaction patterns, UX writing, visual design, and end-to-end customer experience.
Build lightweight, scalable design processes that help a fast-moving team make better decisions without adding unnecessary drag.
Support commercial work with sharp sales collateral, demos, diagrams, launch materials, and customer-facing narratives.
Hire and develop designers as the function grows, while staying hands-on enough to set the standard yourself.