About the Role
Lead Product Designer to lead design across SDF’s products and raise the bar on craft for the whole team. This is a player-coach role, managing and mentoring another designer while remaining an individual contributor on important work. You will set the design vision, uphold an exceptional standard of craft, and leverage AI tools to multiply what a small design team can deliver.
Responsibilities
- Own the design vision for key product areas.
- Establish how the team works, including AI-assisted workflows.
- Support the growth of the designer you manage.
- Set and champion a clear product design vision aligned with company goals and brand values.
- Contribute directly to our most important projects with exceptional visual and interaction craft.
- Manage, mentor, and grow another product designer, providing thoughtful feedback and career development.
- Maintain and scale our design system to ensure consistency and speed across products.
- Leverage AI design and prototyping tools to increase the team’s leverage and the quality and velocity of what you ship.
- Partner closely with Product and Engineering to ship pixel-perfect, user-centered experiences.
- Conduct user research and usability testing to validate decisions, and champion user-centered design across the organization.
Requirements
- 7+ years of product design experience with a strong portfolio of shipped, end-to-end work.
- Exceptional visual and interaction design skills and a critical eye for detail.
- Experience managing or mentoring other designers (formal management a plus).
- Demonstrated use of AI tools to accelerate and elevate design work.
- Expert knowledge of modern design tools (Figma, Framer, etc.) and experience building and scaling design systems.
- Strong communication; you can present, influence, and align stakeholders at all levels.
- A strong understanding of user-centered design, with experience in research and usability testing.
- On-chain / crypto / fintech design experience.
- Experience building or scaling a design team.
- Experience prototyping with code or AI tools (Framer, v0, and similar).
- Founder or 0→1 experience.
Skills
- Product design
- Visual design
- Interaction design
- Design systems
- AI design tools
- Prototyping
- User research
- Usability testing
- Figma
- Framer
Location
- USA
Work Type
- Hybrid
Experience Level
- Lead
- 7+ years
Salary/Compensations
- $170,000 - $235,000
Benefits
- Competitive health, dental & vision coverage with most plans covered at 100% for the employee + any dependents
- Flexible time off + 15 company holidays including a company-wide holiday break
- Generous paid parental leave for all parents, plus paid pregnancy disability leave for birthing parents
- Gym reimbursement ($80 per month)
- Life & ADD (up to $50K)
- Short & Long term disability
- 401K with 4% match
- Health & Dependent Care FSA Accounts
- Commuter benefits with $250/month employer contribution
- Health Savings Account (HSA) with monthly employer contribution
- Family building benefits through Kindbody
- Wellbeing benefits (One Medical, Rightway, Headspace)
- L&D budget of $1,500/year
- Daily lunch and snacks in office
- Company retreats
- Lumen-denominated grants
About the Company
- Since 2014, the mission-driven team at the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has helped fuel the tremendous growth of the Stellar blockchain network, an open-source platform that operates at high-scale today.
- Stellar is more than a blockchain. Powered by a decentralized, fast, scalable, and uniquely sustainable network made for financial products and services and a thriving and passionate ecosystem that includes a non-profit organization driven by a mission, Stellar is paving the path to unlock the world’s economic potential through blockchain technology.
- Built with speed and low costs in mind, the Stellar network provides builders and financial institutions worldwide a platform to issue assets, and to send and convert currencies in real time creating real world utility.
- Founded in 2014, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) supports the continued development and growth of the Stellar network and also serves the ecosystem of NGOs, corporations, universities, small businesses, governments, and solo entrepreneurs building on the Stellar network through tooling, funding and strategic collaborations.
- The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) is a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting change-makers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology.
- SDF provides grants, investments, funding, and other awards to builders and organizations.
- SDF also develops resources and tooling on the Stellar network to help unlock real world utility.
- As a nonprofit foundation, SDF puts the health of the Stellar network and the Stellar ecosystem and its mission above all else.
Equal Opportunity
- SDF is committed to diversity in its workforce and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. SDF does not make hiring or employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other basis protected by applicable local, state or federal law.
