Senior Product Designer - Financial Crimes

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Senior Product Designer - Financial Crimes Company: Mercury Location: San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; Portland, OR; Remote within Canada; United States Job Type: Full-Time Category: Design / Product / Operations (Financial Crimes) Date Posted: February 11, 2026 Experience Level: 7+ years (Senior Level) Remote Status: Fully Remote

🚀 Role Summary

• Design and own critical financial crimes decision systems, influencing the company's operational velocity, customer trust, and overall scale.
• Develop a deep understanding of risk detection, operational efficiency, and customer impact within complex, multi-stakeholder ecosystems, balancing the needs of internal teams, external partners, and regulators.
• Apply systems thinking and interaction design principles to craft intuitive interfaces for complex workflows, integrating data-driven insights and potentially AI/ML models.
• Drive product strategy and roadmap alignment through compelling prototypes and narratives, fostering collaboration across product, engineering, and investigations teams.

📝 Enhancement Note: While the title is "Senior Product Designer," the core responsibilities and domain (Financial Crimes) indicate a strong overlap with operational roles, particularly in areas of risk management, compliance, and process optimization within a fintech environment. This role requires a unique blend of design thinking and operational understanding to build systems that effectively manage risk.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Own High-Stakes Decision Systems: Design and refine internal tools and decision points for financial crime detection, including onboarding pauses, risk surfacing, and investigator support systems, ensuring clarity, fairness, and minimal disruption to legitimate customers.
• Design for Judgment and Automation: Lead the end-to-end design process, from scoping and workflow definition to detailed interaction and visual design, with a focus on systems that support human judgment alongside automated processes and AI/ML integration.
• Ground Decisions in Real-World Insights: Conduct deep, contextual research with investigators, strategists, and cross-functional partners to identify operational pain points, manual workarounds, and unmet needs.
• Test and Validate Designs: Employ rigorous usability testing and validation methods to ensure comprehension, confidence, and decision quality in complex, high-stakes scenarios.
• Shape Product Direction: Use research insights to inform product strategy, system design, and team understanding, contributing to a product roadmap that addresses both user outcomes and business goals.
• Drive Cross-Functional Alignment: Partner closely with product management, engineering, and investigations teams to contribute to strategy and roadmap development, using prototypes and narratives to build consensus across diverse audiences.
• Develop Scalable Design Patterns: Create and advocate for consistent, efficient design patterns that enhance user outcomes and business objectives, improving speed and confidence as Mercury scales.
• Translate Complex Constraints: Effectively translate intricate technical, policy, and regulatory constraints into understandable, intuitive, and actionable user interfaces.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on "high-stakes decision systems," "risk detection," "operational efficiency," and "balancing risk detection, operational efficiency, and customer impact" strongly suggests that candidates with experience in operations-adjacent design roles (e.g., designing internal tools for compliance, fraud, or investigations) will be highly valued.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: No specific degree mentioned, but a strong portfolio demonstrating relevant experience is paramount. Experience: 7+ years of product design experience, with a proven track record of owning end-to-end projects, especially in complex or ambiguous problem spaces.

Required Skills:

• Product Design Ownership: Proven ability to own and drive complex projects from conception through implementation.
• Systems Thinking: Strong capacity to understand and design for intricate, multi-user, multi-modal, multi-step workflows.
• Interaction Design: Expertise in crafting clear, usable, and efficient user interactions, particularly under real-world constraints and edge cases.
• Prototyping Proficiency: Skilled in using prototyping as a core thinking tool for exploring tradeoffs, testing assumptions, and aligning stakeholders.
• User Research & Usability Testing: Experience in conducting contextual research and usability testing to gather insights and validate design decisions.
• Data-Heavy or Regulated Domain Experience: Experience in fintech, trust & safety, healthcare, security, or similar operationally complex domains, or a strong motivation to deeply learn one.
• Problem Solving: Ability to translate complex technical or policy constraints into intuitive interfaces.
• Collaboration & Influence: Thrives in multi-stakeholder environments, able to navigate disagreement with clarity, empathy, and a bias toward action.
• Judgment & Decision Making: Ability to balance rigor with momentum, understanding when to push for quality versus when to ship and iterate.
• Humility & Teamwork: Values collaboration, humility, and shared ownership, especially when working with peers at different career levels.

Preferred Skills:

• AI/ML Integration: Experience designing alongside data-driven or automated systems, including integrating AI or ML models and representing uncertainty or human review in interfaces.
• Financial Crimes Domain Knowledge: Deep understanding of financial crime detection, compliance, regulatory landscapes, or investigation workflows.
• Visual Design: Ability to craft high-quality visual concepts and ensure design consistency.
• Cross-functional Strategy Contribution: Experience contributing to product strategy and roadmaps in partnership with product management and engineering.

📝 Enhancement Note: The requirement for 7+ years of experience and the focus on complex, ambiguous problem spaces and regulated domains suggest a Senior to Lead level Product Designer with a strong operational mindset. The emphasis on integrating AI/ML and understanding uncertainty points towards a forward-thinking designer.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• End-to-End Project Ownership: Showcase projects where you took ownership from initial problem definition through to implementation, demonstrating a full design lifecycle.
• Complex Workflow Design: Feature examples of designing intricate, multi-step workflows, illustrating how you managed complexity and ensured usability.
• Data-Driven or Regulated Domain Case Studies: Include case studies from data-heavy, regulated, or operationally complex environments (Fintech, Trust & Safety, etc.), highlighting your ability to navigate specific constraints.
• Research and Testing Impact: Demonstrate how user research and usability testing directly influenced design decisions and led to measurable improvements.
• Systemic Thinking Examples: Present designs that show an understanding of broader systems, user ecosystems, and how individual components interact.

Process Documentation:

• Workflow Design & Optimization: Provide examples of how you've mapped, analyzed, and optimized complex user or operational workflows.
• User Research Methodologies: Detail the contextual research and usability testing methods you've employed, and how insights were translated into actionable design improvements.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Illustrate how you've partnered with Product, Engineering, and other stakeholders to define requirements, provide feedback, and ensure successful implementation.
• Risk/Compliance System Design: If applicable, showcase experience designing systems that manage risk, compliance, or high-stakes decisions.

📝 Enhancement Note: For a role focused on Financial Crimes, a portfolio that clearly articulates the "why" behind design decisions, grounded in research and an understanding of operational impact, will be crucial. Demonstrating an ability to design for systems that manage risk and support complex human judgment will be a significant advantage.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range:

• US Employees: $189,000 – $236,200 USD per year
• Canadian Employees: CAD $178,600 – $223,200 per year

Benefits:

• Equity: Stock options offered as part of the total compensation package.
• Health Insurance: Comprehensive health coverage.
• Competitive Salary & Equity: Aligned with industry standards for SaaS and fintech.
• Regular Compensation Reviews: Salary and equity ranges are updated based on reliable compensation survey data.

Working Hours: Assumed to be standard full-time hours (approximately 40 hours per week), with flexibility expected for a remote, global team and the nature of high-stakes operations.

📝 Enhancement Note: The provided salary ranges are specific and competitive for senior design roles in the US and Canada within the fintech sector. The note about new hire offers being based on experience, expertise, geography, and internal pay equity is standard but important for candidates to consider.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Fintech (Banking Services for Businesses) Company Size: Growing startup/scale-up environment. Founded: Mercury was founded in 2017.

Team Structure:

• The Financial Crimes team is a critical operational function within Mercury, likely comprising investigators, strategists, operations specialists, and the product/design teams supporting them.
• This role reports into a product or design leadership function, with close collaboration across Product Management, Engineering, and the Investigations/Operations teams.
• Cross-functional collaboration is essential, requiring designers to work effectively with diverse teams to understand nuanced operational challenges and regulatory requirements.

Methodology:

• Data-Driven Decision Making: Insights from user research, operational data, and performance metrics are used to inform product and system design.
• Iterative Design & Development: The company values shipping and iterating, balancing the need for high quality in critical systems with the momentum required for a fast-growing company.
• First Principles Thinking: Designs are crafted from first principles, anticipating edge cases and complex scenarios.

Company Website: https://mercury.com/

📝 Enhancement Note: Mercury operates in the competitive fintech space, emphasizing speed, trust, and operational scale. The Financial Crimes function is core to its ability to operate safely and compliantly, making this role highly visible and impactful. The culture likely values pragmatism, strong communication, and a collaborative approach to solving complex problems.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: Senior Product Designer, with significant ownership and influence over critical operational systems. This role offers the opportunity to deepen expertise in a highly specialized and impactful domain within fintech. Reporting Structure: Likely reports to a Head of Product Design or similar leadership role, with day-to-day collaboration with Product Managers and Engineering leads focused on Financial Crimes. Operations Impact: This role directly impacts Mercury's ability to scale its operations safely and compliantly. Effective design in financial crimes systems is crucial for:

• Preventing Fraud and Financial Crime: Protecting the company and its customers.
• Ensuring Regulatory Compliance: Meeting legal and industry standards.
• Optimizing Operational Efficiency: Streamlining processes for internal investigation teams.
• Building Customer Trust: Demonstrating a robust and reliable platform.
• Enabling Business Velocity: Allowing legitimate transactions and customer onboarding to proceed smoothly.

Growth Opportunities:

• Domain Expertise: Deepen expertise in financial crimes, regulatory compliance, and operational risk management within fintech.
• Design Leadership: Potential to grow into a lead design role for the Financial Crimes domain or related operational areas, mentoring junior designers.
• Product Strategy Influence: Contribute more significantly to the strategic direction of financial crime prevention systems and related products.
• Cross-functional Mobility: Develop strong relationships and understanding across Product, Engineering, and Operations, opening doors to other strategic roles.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role is ideal for a designer who wants to move beyond surface-level UI and tackle complex, impactful operational challenges. The growth path is less about traditional UX ladder progression and more about becoming a subject matter expert and strategic partner in a critical business function.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: Fully Remote. This means the work environment is home-based, requiring self-discipline and effective digital communication. Office Location(s): While remote, the company has a presence and targets specific locations for its employees (San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; Portland, OR; Canada). This may influence time zone collaboration expectations.

Workspace Context:

• Collaboration: Expect a highly collaborative remote environment, relying heavily on tools like Slack, Zoom, and Figma for communication and design work.
• Tools & Technology: Access to industry-standard design and collaboration tools will be provided. The role requires comfort with digital tools for research, design, prototyping, and communication.
• Team Interaction: Regular virtual stand-ups, design reviews, and cross-functional meetings will be part of the routine. Building strong working relationships digitally is key.

Work Schedule: Standard full-time hours (approx. 40 hours/week). Given the remote nature and potential for global collaboration (e.g., with teams in different time zones), some flexibility may be required. The emphasis on balancing "rigor and momentum" suggests a need to be efficient and effective within working hours.

📝 Enhancement Note: As a fully remote role, candidates must be comfortable with asynchronous communication and proactive engagement. The company's stated locations suggest a preference for candidates within these regions, potentially for timezone alignment or legal/HR purposes.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screen: Likely a recruiter screen to assess general fit, experience, and interest.
• Portfolio & Design Review: A deep dive into your portfolio, discussing specific projects, your process, and how you approach complex problems. Expect to present 2-3 relevant case studies.
• Hiring Manager Interview: Discussion with the hiring manager about your experience, approach to design, and alignment with the team's goals.
• Cross-Functional Interviews: Interviews with Product Managers, Engineers, and potentially members of the Investigations/Operations team to assess collaboration skills, technical understanding, and domain fit.
• Executive/Leadership Interview: A final conversation with senior leadership to assess strategic thinking, cultural fit, and overall impact potential.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Focus on Impact: For each project, clearly articulate the problem, your role, your design process, the solutions you proposed, and the measurable impact (e.g., improved efficiency, reduced errors, better decision-making).
• Showcase Complex Workflows: Highlight projects involving intricate, multi-step processes or decision-making systems. Explain how you simplified complexity.
• Demonstrate Research & Validation: Detail your research methodologies and how user feedback informed your design iterations. Include examples of how you tested assumptions.
• Explain Systems Thinking: Illustrate your understanding of how your designs fit into the larger product and operational ecosystem.
• Address Constraints: Be prepared to discuss how you handled technical, policy, or regulatory constraints in your designs.
• Tailor to Financial Crimes: If possible, include projects that touch upon regulated industries, risk management, or internal operational tools. If not, clearly explain how your transferable skills apply.

Challenge Preparation:

• Design Challenge: Expect a take-home design challenge or a live design exercise. This will likely involve a complex problem statement related to financial crimes or operational efficiency.
• Focus on Process: For any challenge, emphasize your thought process, research approach, and how you would iterate. Show your work, even if it's not fully polished.
• Stakeholder Communication: Practice articulating your design rationale clearly and concisely, as if presenting to a mixed audience of designers, engineers, and business stakeholders.

📝 Enhancement Note: Given the role's focus, interviewers will be looking for a designer who can think strategically, understand operational nuances, and articulate complex solutions clearly. The portfolio is paramount; it should demonstrate the ability to solve difficult problems with measurable outcomes.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Design & Prototyping Software: Figma (highly probable, given industry trends and collaboration needs), Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite.
• User Research Platforms: Tools for conducting remote interviews, usability testing, and synthesizing qualitative data.
• Collaboration Tools: Slack, Zoom, Google Workspace, Confluence/Jira for project management and documentation.

Analytics & Reporting:

• While not a direct analyst role, understanding how to work with data and potentially interpret dashboards (e.g., Tableau, Looker, internal BI tools) to inform design decisions and measure impact is beneficial.

CRM & Automation:

• Familiarity with internal tooling that might resemble CRM or workflow automation platforms used by operations teams would be advantageous, though not explicitly required. This role is about designing for such systems.

📝 Enhancement Note: Proficiency in modern design tools like Figma is almost certainly a prerequisite. The ability to integrate with and design for systems that leverage data and potentially AI/ML is a key requirement.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values (Inferred):

• Impact-Driven: A focus on delivering tangible results that improve operational efficiency, safety, and customer trust.
• Data-Informed: Decisions are grounded in research, data analysis, and user feedback.
• Collaborative: Strong emphasis on teamwork and open communication across disciplines.
• Pragmatic & Iterative: A balance between thoughtful design and the need for timely execution and continuous improvement.
• User-Centric (Internal & External): Designing for both the end-user (customer) and internal users (investigators, strategists).
• Ownership & Accountability: Taking responsibility for outcomes and driving solutions forward.

Collaboration Style:

• Cross-functional Partnership: Working closely with Product Managers, Engineers, and Operations/Investigations teams as a true partner, not just an order-taker.
• Open Feedback: A culture that encourages constructive feedback during design reviews and team discussions.
• Knowledge Sharing: Proactively sharing insights, best practices, and learnings across teams.
• Empathy: A strong emphasis on understanding the perspectives and challenges of both internal users and external customers.

📝 Enhancement Note: The company's description and the nature of the role imply a culture that values solving hard problems, working through ambiguity, and fostering a sense of shared ownership, particularly around critical operational functions like financial crimes.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Designing for Ambiguity: Financial crime landscapes are constantly evolving, requiring designers to adapt to new threats and regulatory changes.
• Balancing Conflicting Needs: Juggling the requirements of risk detection, operational efficiency, customer experience, and regulatory compliance presents complex trade-offs.
• High-Stakes Decision Support: Designing systems where errors have significant consequences requires extreme diligence and a robust design process.
• Remote Collaboration: Effectively collaborating and building consensus in a fully remote environment across different time zones.
• Translating Complexity: Simplifying highly technical, policy-driven, or data-intensive concepts into intuitive user interfaces.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Deep Domain Expertise: Become a subject matter expert in fintech financial crimes, compliance, and operational risk.
• Strategic Design Influence: Shape the direction of critical operational systems and contribute to high-level product strategy.
• Cross-functional Acumen: Develop a deep understanding of how product, engineering, and operations functions interrelate in a high-growth fintech company.
• Advanced Design Skills: Hone skills in complex systems design, integrating AI/ML into UIs, and designing for human-AI collaboration.
• Leadership Potential: Opportunities to mentor junior designers and lead design initiatives within the financial crimes domain.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role offers a significant opportunity for a designer to tackle challenging, real-world problems with tangible impact, moving beyond typical consumer-facing product design into a more operationally focused and strategically critical area.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "Describe a time you designed a system to manage complex, multi-stakeholder workflows. What were the key challenges and how did you address them?" (Focus on your process, decision-making, and outcomes.)
• "How do you approach designing for systems that involve both automation (like AI/ML) and human judgment? How do you represent uncertainty or confidence levels in an interface?" (Prepare examples of designing for human-in-the-loop systems.)
• "Walk us through a project where you had to translate complex technical or policy constraints into a simple, intuitive user experience. What was your process?" (Highlight your ability to distill complexity.)
• "Describe your experience with user research in regulated or operationally complex domains. How did you ensure your research was contextual and actionable?" (Emphasize your research methodology and impact.)

Company & Culture Questions:

• "Why are you interested in designing for Financial Crimes at Mercury? What excites you about this specific domain?" (Research Mercury's mission and the importance of financial crimes in fintech.)
• "How do you balance rigor and momentum in your design work, especially when dealing with high-stakes systems?" (Discuss your approach to shipping quality products efficiently.)
• "Describe your ideal collaboration style with product managers and engineers, particularly in a remote setting." (Showcase your teamwork and communication skills.)

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Select 2-3 Strongest, Most Relevant Projects: Prioritize projects that showcase end-to-end ownership, complex workflows, data-heavy domains, or problem-solving in regulated environments.
• Structure Each Case Study: Problem -> Your Role -> Process (Research, Ideation, Design, Testing) -> Solution -> Impact/Outcome.
• Quantify Impact: Whenever possible, use metrics to demonstrate the success of your designs (e.g., "reduced investigation time by X%", "improved accuracy of decision-making by Y%", "decreased false positive rate by Z%").
• Highlight Collaboration: Explain how you worked with cross-functional partners throughout the design process.
• Be Prepared for Deep Dives: Anticipate questions about specific design choices, tradeoffs, and alternative solutions you considered.

📝 Enhancement Note: Prepare to discuss not just "what" you designed, but "why" and "how," with a clear focus on the operational impact and user experience for both internal investigators and external customers.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this operations-focused design position:

• Submit your application through the Greenhouse portal linked in the job posting.
• Curate Your Portfolio: Select 2-3 projects that best demonstrate your experience with complex systems, operational workflows, data-heavy domains, and end-to-end design ownership. Ensure each case study clearly articulates the problem, your process, your solution, and the measurable impact.
• Tailor Your Resume: Highlight keywords and experiences relevant to product design, systems thinking, user research, and any experience in regulated industries or operational environments. Emphasize your 7+ years of experience and senior-level capabilities.
• Prepare for Portfolio Presentation: Practice walking through your selected case studies, focusing on your thought process, decision-making, and the impact of your work. Be ready to discuss your approach to balancing risk, efficiency, and user needs.
• Research Mercury: Understand their mission, target market, and the importance of financial crimes in the fintech space. Prepare thoughtful questions about the team, challenges, and company culture.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.