Product Design Manager

Sydecar•San Francisco, CA

10d

About The Position

We’re hiring a Manager of Product Design to help redefine our product experience as we scale. This is a high-ownership, high-execution role for a design leader who moves fast, makes strong decisions, and drives work to completion while maintaining an exceptional bar for craft and customer understanding. You’ll manage a team of Product Designers while remaining deeply hands-on. You’ll play a central role in shaping product strategy through deep user research, strong design judgment, and close partnership with Product and Engineering. Our product operates in a regulated environment, serving a broad range of customers from first time investors and deal organizers to large venture capital firms. Success in this role requires balancing compliance and regulatory constraints with delivering a best-in-class, intuitive experience for complex financial workflows.

Requirements

7+ years of product design experience, including at least 2 years experience leading or managing designers
Strong demonstration in building design teams and scalable design processes
Exceptionally strong hands-on design skills, with a portfolio demonstrating end-to-end UX ownership and redesigns
Deep experience leading and applying user research to drive strategy and execution
Strong experience designing complex workflows, multi-step processes, or systems-heavy products
Strong experience in design systems and UI libraries
Strong preference for experience working in regulated markets, especially fintech, capital markets, or private venture
Ability to balance compliance and regulatory needs with delivering a best-in-class customer experience
Data-informed, outcome-oriented designer with a bias toward execution
Comfortable operating in ambiguity and energized by early-stage environments

Nice To Haves

Experience with consumer and/or SMB products strongly preferred

Responsibilities

Own and Evolve the End-to-End UX
Lead the evolution of the entire user experience for deal leads, investors, and internal operations teams
Personally drive design on high-impact initiatives, from discovery through delivery
Simplify complex, regulated workflows into clear, intuitive, and experiences that create trust for our customers
Set and maintain a high bar for design quality while operating with startup speed
Research-Led Design Leadership
Lead user research as a first-class input to product strategy and design decisions
Partner closely with Product Managers to define problems, test assumptions, and validate solutions
Act as a strong voice of the customer in roadmap and prioritization discussions as well as on specific initiatives
Synthesize qualitative and quantitative insights into clear, actionable direction
Design Systems & UI Foundations
Lead the adoption and evolution of design systems, shared UI components, and design libraries
Partner with Engineering and Product to ensure consistent implementation across the product
Define standards, guidelines, and best practices that enable speed without sacrificing quality
Balance systemization with flexibility as the product evolves
Design for Impact in a Regulated Environment
Work with SMEs to balance regulatory, compliance, and operational requirements with excellent UX
Design systems and flows that support trust, accuracy, and clarity for investors and deal organizers
Make confident tradeoffs when constrained, and communicate them clearly
Use data to inform decisions and optimize for outcomes such as conversion, activation, and retention
Build and Lead a High-Ownership Team
Manage, mentor, and develop a team of Product Designers
Provide direct feedback and clear direction to keep work moving forward
Foster a culture of trust, collaboration, speed, accountability, and continuous improvement
Help designers grow both their craft and product thinking