Senior Design Manager - Business Banking & Investments

Mercury•San Francisco, NY

12d

About The Position

Mercury is seeking a Design Manager to lead design for its Business Banking and Investments teams, covering payments, accounts, and treasury. The role combines creative leadership with hands-on design craft, with accountability for the quality of shipped work, the growth of designers, and the impact of customer experiences. The goal is to challenge familiar banking workflows and create meaningfully simpler, more useful financial software. The manager will set and maintain a high bar for visual and interaction design, guide the team through thoughtful critique and clear direction, and review implemented experiences as well as design files. They will partner with Product and Engineering to establish ambitious product direction, question assumptions, take ownership from problem discovery through post-launch outcomes, and make practical decisions about scope, sequencing, and team focus. The role also involves coaching and developing designers, setting performance expectations, addressing gaps, building shared conviction around the work, and making designers’ contributions visible across Mercury Design. The manager is expected to contribute directly through sketching, prototyping, and resolving difficult design problems when useful, while preserving designers’ ownership. Success means the team ships work that demonstrates a higher standard of visual craft, interaction quality, and simplicity; delivers approaches beyond incremental improvements with clear customer and business impact; and has designers who are ambitious, reliable, and growing in judgment.

Requirements

Strong visual and interaction design craft, demonstrated through shipped products and thoughtful typography, composition, hierarchy, and interaction design.
Ability to simplify complex product experiences, workflows, information architecture, and product constraints.
Experience managing designers and raising the quality of their work through coaching, feedback, and clear expectations.
Ability to inspire ambition while holding designers accountable.
Experience setting product vision and helping a team deliver it, connecting direction to scope and sequencing decisions and shipped work with clear customer or business impact.
Comfort sketching, prototyping, and working through detailed design problems alongside designers.
Ability to build strong partnerships with Product and Engineering, shape priorities, navigate constraints, and communicate design decisions clearly.
Ownership mindset: identify opportunities before they are assigned, make decisions with incomplete information, adapt to shifting priorities, and stay close to implementation and outcomes.
Ability to build conviction through clear storytelling, curiosity in disagreements, specific reasoning, and openness to better ideas.
Applicants should share examples of their own design craft and work produced under their leadership, including standards set, assumptions challenged, decisions owned, and shipped outcomes.

Responsibilities

Raise the visual and interaction quality of the team’s work, from complex workflow structure to typography, composition, spacing, and motion.
Set concrete quality standards through critique and clear direction, and review implemented experiences as well as design files.
Partner with Product and Engineering to shape an ambitious direction for payments, accounts, and treasury.
Challenge inherited assumptions, distinguish genuine constraints from familiar habits, explore alternatives, and help deliver simpler, more useful products.
Identify opportunities, create clarity in ambiguous situations, bring the right people together, make decisions, and work through obstacles.
Own work through handoff and launch, assess customer and business outcomes, and respond when results fall short.
Contribute hands-on through sketching, prototyping, and working through difficult flows when doing so will advance the work or develop designers’ judgment.
Make deliberate decisions about scope, sequencing, and team attention; surface and resolve tradeoffs with partners.
Develop designers’ craft, confidence, judgment, and ability to deliver through direct feedback and clear performance expectations.
Address performance gaps with care and conviction, explain why the work matters, and build alignment around a shared vision.
Recognize designers’ contributions and make their work visible across Mercury Design.