Head of Design

Kikoff • San Francisco, CA

22h

About The Position

As Head of Design, you will own the design vision, craft, and execution across the company. You will set the quality bar, rebuild the foundation our product is built on, and be a direct partner to senior leadership on the decisions that shape what Kikoff feels like to use. This is not a hands-off role. You will be close to the pixels, close to the product, and close to the team. You will give real feedback on real work, and you will be expected to make the call when designers are stuck in ambiguity.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in product design, with substantial time in consumer-facing, mobile-first products
• 7+ years leading and managing design teams - you have grown designers into senior ICs and you have built a team that does great work without you in the room
• Demonstrated experience scaling a design team through a growth phase: you have hired strong designers and you know how to grow a team without losing the craft
• Deep design sense across visual, interaction, and UX - you can engage at the pixel level when it matters and you can give feedback that makes the work better
• A track record of building and rebuilding design systems that the team actually adopts and that hold up as the product grows
• A track record of partnering with product and engineering as a peer, and shipping work that moved the business
• Hands-on fluency with modern AI tooling for design - you have used it, formed real opinions, and have a clear point of view on how it changes the team
• The ability to make your team better every day: through clarity, honest feedback, and trust with strong practitioners
• A sharp eye for brand integrity. You ensure our brand values are deeply woven into the product’s DNA. You can align cross-functional stakeholders on a unified brand vision and ensure that every pixel of the UI speaks our specific visual language.
• Compassion. You care about the people on your team, you listen to ICs, and you pay attention to what designers are saying so the work - and the team - can get better

Nice To Haves

• Experience in fintech, consumer credit, or other regulated consumer products
• Experience leading both product design and brand or creative functions, or bringing those teams closer together
• Experience building or scaling a design system that supports both native mobile and marketing surfaces

Responsibilities

• Manage, coach, and develop the product design team - including hands-on mentorship of junior designers, not just feedback in big meetings
• Own hiring and talent strategy: bring in designers who raise the bar, and shape the org structure that lets them do their best work
• Set a high bar for craft, ownership, and user obsession across the team
• Invest in career growth: clear expectations, honest feedback, and a path forward for every designer on the team
• Go beyond filling headcount. Understand each designer's strengths and place them where they'll do their best work and develop in the desired growth areas.
• Set the overall design vision for Kikoff - what good looks like, how the team works, how designers grow
• Make the call when there is ambiguity: a great design manager can resolve a design decision when the team is stuck, instead of leaving it open
• Give practical, down-to-earth feedback grounded in visual, UX, and craft fundamentals - not just product framing
• Champion the visual front and push the bar on what Kikoff can look and feel like
• Build the design system from the ground up so it is something the whole company and our coding agents will want to use
• Define and enforce design patterns across the product to reduce design debt and bring consistency
• Drive the standards that make every screen feel like Kikoff, across product, marketing, and brand surfaces
• Be a strategic partner to Engineering, Product, and Marketing as a peer - not a downstream resource
• Bring product design and creative closer together: together ship brand-quality product and product-quality brand
• Take company-wide direction on design, brand, and creative - and translate it into work that benefits product, marketing, and creative at the same time
• Bring user insights into the work: run journey workshops, listen to the user's voice, and make sure the team is designing for real people, not just shipping screens
• Define how the Kikoff design team uses AI - with a clear, hands-on plan, not a slide
• Be hands-on yourself: try new tools, prototype, vibe-code small fixes, and bring back what works to the team to help them adopt it
• Help the team figure out the new workflow together - what to use AI for, what to keep human, and how to keep craft from sliding

Benefits

• We value extreme ownership, clear communication, a strong sense of craftsmanship, and the desire to create lasting work and work relationships.
• Yes, you can build an exciting business AND have real-life real-customer impact.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed