Lead Product Designer

Arca•New York, NY

4d•Onsite

About The Position

Arca is hiring a hands-on product design leader to set the vision, visual language, and product experience for its AI-powered wealth management business. Working directly with the founder and engineering team, this person will design across the advisor platform and the client experience, from initial concepts through prototyping and shipping. The role owns the design foundations and patterns that future designers will build on. The work spans client-facing wealth management experiences; advisor tools; agentic workflows and trust; generative UI patterns and systems; research with advisors and clients; and the design function as it grows. The designer will help shape the product from an early stage, including defining a consumer experience that Arca has not previously built. The position also includes establishing design principles, visual language, systems, hiring, rituals, and craft standards as the team expands. Arca is a wealth management firm rebuilding its business around AI. It began by acquiring firms managing more than $1 billion in client assets and is now developing its platform and experiences to serve advisors and clients at scale. The company has about 80% technical staff and is based in New York City's Flatiron district. The team works fully in-office five days a week.

Requirements

Senior- or staff-level product design experience.
A portfolio demonstrating exceptional, polished product design work.
Experience building a product from zero to one at a startup and shipping quickly.
Experience designing consumer products or consumer-focused B2B products to a high consumer-product standard.
Uses AI tools regularly and has informed opinions about the possibilities of agents.
Comfort prototyping in code and communicating effectively with engineers.
Understands user research and can distinguish what users request from what they need.
Ability to set direction, lead through ambiguity, and make decisions with incomplete information.
Strong hands-on design craft, fast iteration, and high standards.
Ability to give candid feedback in a kind, direct, and low-ego manner and collaborate in a close-knit, in-office team.

Nice To Haves

Experience at both early- and later-stage companies.
Fintech experience.
Experience designing specifically for agents.
Background at design-forward companies such as Linear, Mercury, Stripe, Ramp, or Notion, or a trajectory demonstrating a comparable design standard.

Responsibilities

Set the product design vision, look, and feel for Arca from the ground up.
Design, prototype, and ship experiences in close collaboration with the founder and engineering team.
Define the client experience for viewing financial information, engaging with advisors, and managing wealth.
Design advisor-facing platform surfaces that help advisors serve more clients while maintaining high-touch service.
Design agentic experiences, including how users work with agents that draft, decide, and act, when to involve a human, and how to build trust in agent actions.
Create generative UI patterns, components, rules, and constraints that keep dynamically assembled interfaces coherent, predictable, and on-brand.
Establish design principles, visual language, and a product design system across the company's products and acquired firms.
Conduct research with advisors and clients, observe how they use the product, and apply findings to product design.
Build the design function as the company grows, including hiring, rituals, and craft standards.
Develop clear, trustworthy experiences for reviewing agent work and understanding actions involving client money.