The Problem and the Role
OpenFX is on a mission to move money as freely as data, unrestricted by time zones, banking hours, or legacy systems. We are building the infrastructure that will power the next generation of cross-border payment systems for institutions.
We are seeking an exceptional Head of Design to lead our design organization during a critical phase of product maturity and scale. You will own the end-to-end design vision for our platform, creating intuitive interfaces that make complex financial operations feel simple for our institutional partners.
This is a foundational role where you will lead the design strategy for our core suite of products across multiple currencies and blockchain networks. Your work will directly impact how banks, payment providers, and fintech companies manage billions in transaction volume. You will establish design operations that can support our 10x growth trajectory, building systems that enable rapid iteration without sacrificing quality or consistency.
What You'll Actually Do & Own
* Audit and Rebuild:
In your first six months, you will conduct a comprehensive audit of our current design system and user experience, identifying critical gaps where design debt is creating operational friction or limiting our ability to scale. You will establish the foundation for a world-class design organization.
* Design Financial Tooling:
You will work closely with our product and engineering teams to improve our trading and treasury management interfaces, bringing sophisticated financial operations tooling to life through clean, purposeful design. This means understanding the nuances of how traders monitor liquidity across multiple venues, how treasury teams manage capital allocation decisions, and how operations teams need to track and reconcile thousands of transactions daily.
* Build the Design System:
You will create a scalable design system that supports multiple product lines, define our approach to user research with institutional clients, and ensure that accessibility and usability standards are embedded in everything we ship. You will establish design operations that enable rapid iteration without sacrificing quality or consistency.
* Build and Mentor the Team:
You will build and mentor a design team as we scale, establishing the culture, processes, and standards that will define design excellence at OpenFX. As a founding design leader, you will define the hiring standards, the voice, and the culture of the design organization.
* Shape Design Strategy:
You will partner effectively with product managers and engineers to make smart tradeoffs under constraints. You will articulate design rationale that connects user needs to business outcomes, and you will be comfortable making decisions with imperfect information while moving quickly. Your design decisions will fundamentally shape our product trajectory and competitive positioning.
What Success Looks Like
* Platform Transformation:
In your first year, you will have transformed our platform's usability, making previously manual or error-prone operations intuitive and reliable. Our financial institution partners will describe our tools as best-in-class compared to competitors.
* Design System Velocity:
Your design system will enable our engineering team to ship new features faster while maintaining visual and interaction consistency across the platform.
* Organizational Foundation:
You will have built the foundation for a world-class design organization that can scale with our ambitious growth plans, establishing the culture, processes, and standards that will define design excellence at OpenFX.
Requirements
* 8+ Years in Design with Financial Systems Leadership:
You have 8+ years of design experience with at least 3 years leading design for trading systems, market-making platforms, treasury management tools, or institutional financial software. You have designed interfaces where millions of dollars move based on user actions, and you understand the unique requirements of building for high-stakes financial decision-making.
* Trading UI/UX Expertise:
You have deep, hands-on experience with trading UI/UX patterns—order books, position management, P&L visualization, risk dashboards, and real-time data displays. You have wrestled with the challenge of presenting dense financial information clearly without overwhelming users, and you know how to design for both novice operators and expert power users within the same platform.
* Banking and Payments Product Knowledge:
You bring substantial knowledge of banking and payments products, understanding how financial institutions think about onboarding flows, KYC/compliance interfaces, reconciliation tools, reporting systems, and operational workflows. You have designed for regulated environments and appreciate the balance between innovation and institutional requirements.
* Systems Thinking:
You are a systems thinker who can architect comprehensive design frameworks while also obsessing over pixel-perfect details. You know when to standardize components and when custom solutions are warranted. You understand how design decisions at the component level cascade into product-wide implications.
* Collaborative and Pragmatic:
You are collaborative and pragmatic, knowing how to partner effectively with product managers and engineers to make smart tradeoffs under constraints. You can articulate design rationale that connects user needs to business outcomes, and you are comfortable making decisions with imperfect information while moving quickly.
* Portfolio Evidence:
You can point to a portfolio demonstrating your experience with financial services design, particularly trading systems or institutional platforms. Your portfolio shows both strategic vision and execution excellence.
Preferred
* Digital Asset Fluency:
You are fluent in both fiat and digital asset contexts. Whether it's traditional FX trading, payment processing, or blockchain-based settlement, you understand the fundamental operations and can translate complex technical concepts into elegant user experiences. Experience with stablecoins, DeFi protocols, or crypto trading platforms is a significant advantage.
* Design System Architecture:
Experience building design systems from scratch for complex B2B platforms, including component libraries, design tokens, and documentation systems that enable non-designers to build consistent interfaces.
* User Research in Institutional Contexts:
Experience conducting user research with institutional clients—understanding how to extract insights from busy financial professionals and translate them into actionable design improvements.
Why This Role?
* Design Leadership:
You will be joining at an inflection point where design can fundamentally shape our product trajectory and competitive positioning. As we scale, you will define the hiring standards, the voice, and the culture of the design organization.
* The Frontier of Fintech:
You will work on technically sophisticated problems at the frontier of fintech innovation, helping to build the infrastructure that powers the next generation of global money movement. You will learn the inner workings of global finance (FX liquidity, settlement, treasury), but you will apply them to the new payment stack as well as legacy rails of the past.
* Direct User Access:
You will have direct access to institutional users—banks, payment providers, and fintech companies managing billions in transaction volume. You will see the immediate impact of your design decisions on real financial operations.
* The Team:
You are joining a team of ex-Stripe, J.P. Morgan, and PayPal product managers and engineers. We are backed by Accel and Lightspeed, and we value design as a core part of the product. We are scaling our infrastructure to meet exponential demand while building the future of money movement.
To apply: Please submit your portfolio demonstrating your experience with financial services design, particularly trading systems or institutional platforms, along with your resume.