Innovation Head of Design

Brown Brothers Harriman•Boston, MA

17h

About The Position

We are a startup backed by an established enterprise in financial services, on a mission to rebuild how financial services firms create, manage, and execute their data integrations and transformations. Today that process stretches across multiple teams, tools, and handoffs - slow to build, expensive to maintain, and nearly impossible to change. We collapse it into a single AI-native platform that business users can operate without writing a ticket, while engineering teams retain the governance and security controls they require. We're growing our founding team now. We're looking for a Head of Design to be our founding design leader - the person who defines what our product looks and feels like to financial services users, builds the design function from zero, and sets the quality bar that will differentiate us in the market. In financial services data tooling, design is almost always an afterthought. Interfaces are dense, opaque, and built for technical users who have no alternative. We believe that's the wrong approach. Our product needs to be trusted by IT and operated by business users - that requires design that is both precise and accessible. You'll own that challenge from day one. This is a player-coach role with a product-first mandate. You'll be hands-on in Figma daily while also hiring and growing the design team, shaping brand alongside product, and advocating for design as a competitive advantage in an engineering-dominant organization.

Requirements

7+ years product design
2+ years in a design leadership or senior IC role
Player-coach track record - has led or mentored designers while remaining hands-on
Portfolio (Required) Must demonstrate complex, data-dense, or technical B2B product work
Consumer-only portfolios will not be considered - our product is enterprise-grade and technically demanding
Must show both strategic design thinking and execution craft
Expert Figma proficiency - components, variables, auto-layout, prototyping, Dev Mode handoff
AI product design experience - has designed for non-deterministic outputs, streaming interfaces, or human-AI collaboration
Built a design system from scratch - not just contributed to one
Technical fluency - comfortable participating in architecture and engineering discussions; understands how software is built
Startup experience - has operated in ambiguous, resource-constrained environments where shipping comes before perfection

Nice To Haves

Financial services, fintech, or data platform design background
Data visualization design - tables, charts, dashboards, and analytical interfaces
Front-end code capability (HTML/CSS or Angular) for prototyping or design system implementation
Published writing, conference talks, or open-source design contributions
Accessibility expertise for enterprise and compliance environments
Experience with motion and interaction design for complex state transitions

Responsibilities

Define and execute the product design vision for the entire platform
Establish design principles and quality standards that guide every product decision
Make high-judgment UX trade-offs - especially around AI interaction patterns, information density, and the business user vs. IT user divide
Represent design in company strategy discussions and partner with product and engineering leadership on roadmap decisions
Lead design for complex, data-intensive experiences - integration configuration, transformation building, workflow monitoring, execution results, and audit log views
Design AI-native interaction patterns: transformation generation from natural language, streaming outputs, accept/reject/edit flows, AI confidence communication, and human-AI control handoffs
Create UX frameworks that accommodate rapidly evolving AI capabilities - models and features change frequently, and the design must flex accordingly
A fierce defender of user needs and the jobs to be done, all while making high-judgment UX tradeoffs - especially around AI interaction patterns, information density, and user types.
Conduct and synthesize user research with financial services audiences - both business users and IT personas
Build a comprehensive design system from scratch - components, tokens, patterns, and guidelines
Set the craft bar for typography, spacing, interaction details, and polish
Ensure the design system scales to support product and brand as the team grows
Recruit, hire, and mentor a design team - starting solo, growing to 3-5 designers within 12-18 months
Establish design processes: critique sessions, design reviews, handoff workflows, and async collaboration practices
Foster a culture of design excellence within an engineering-dominant organization
Oversee brand identity, visual language, and marketing design - website, launch pages, product communications, and conference materials
Ensure visual consistency across product and marketing touchpoints
Direct key marketing moments - product launches and release communications

Benefits

Category-defining work - AI-native data integration and transformation for financial services doesn't exist yet. You'll help build it from the ground up.
Enterprise backing, startup speed - The credibility, domain expertise, and runway of an established enterprise combined with the pace of a startup. This is an unusual opportunity.
Foundational team - You'll be among the first in-house hires. You'll set architecture, culture, and standards - not inherit them.
Competitive package - Market-rate salary and comprehensive benefits.
Equity is available for select roles.
Poland-based team members receive private healthcare (Medicover or Luxmed), Multisport card, home office setup budget, and professional development budget.
Long-term savings
Healthcare
Income protection
Professional development opportunities
Time off
Rewards and benefits
Philanthropy
Approach to sustainability
Support to thrive personally, physically and financially