Lead User Experience (UX) Designer - Digital Assets

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Lead User Experience (UX) Designer - Digital Assets

Company: Early Warning®

Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Job Type: Full-Time

Category: User Experience Design / Product Design (Fintech Operations)

Date Posted: May 28, 2026

Experience Level: Senior / Lead (8+ years)

Remote Status: Hybrid

🚀 Role Summary

• Drive the strategic UX design direction for a transformative cross-border payments initiative, focusing on translating complex financial mechanics into intuitive and trustworthy user experiences.

• Develop and implement robust UX guidelines and design frameworks essential for consistent adoption across partner financial institutions within the Zelle® network.

• Leverage deep domain expertise in payments and fintech to inform user-centered design decisions, ensuring compliance and operational integrity in a rapidly evolving digital asset landscape.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product management, engineering, strategy, and compliance to architect end-to-end user journeys for a novel product.

• Champion user research and usability testing to validate design concepts and ensure solutions are grounded in real user behavior and needs.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role is positioned as a Lead UX Designer, emphasizing strategic ownership and design direction rather than pure execution. The focus on "Digital Assets" and "cross-border money movement" for Zelle® indicates a strong intersection with FinTech operations, requiring an understanding of financial regulations, payment rails, and the operational complexities of global financial services. The requirement for UX guidelines for external partners highlights a crucial operations-centric aspect of this role, ensuring ecosystem-wide consistency.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Spearhead the UX design strategy for the Zelle® cross-border initiative, encompassing research, ideation, interaction design, and the establishment of comprehensive UX standards.

• Deconstruct intricate payment processes, including currency conversion, stablecoin infrastructure, and compliance workflows, to design user experiences that are perceived as simple, secure, and reliable.

• Author, maintain, and disseminate UX guidelines and design frameworks to ensure seamless and consistent implementation by partner financial institutions across the Zelle® network.

• Initiate, coordinate, and synthesize findings from user research and usability testing to ensure design decisions are data-informed and aligned with user needs and behaviors.

• Proactively identify potential design risks, unforeseen edge cases, and systemic issues within the cross-border payment ecosystem, and drive collaborative resolution across product, engineering, and partner teams.

• Design user flows and interfaces for complex financial transactions, considering international regulations, currency exchange mechanisms, and the unique needs of diverse user demographics.

• Develop and present compelling design rationale to diverse stakeholders, including non-designers, to secure buy-in and alignment on the proposed user experience.

• Contribute to the strategic roadmap by providing design insights and recommendations based on user research, market trends, and the evolving landscape of digital assets and cross-border payments.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on "translating complex payment mechanics" and developing "UX guidelines and frameworks that partner financial institutions implement consistently" strongly suggests that this role will involve significant operational collaboration and a deep understanding of how design impacts downstream processes and partner integrations. This is not just about screen design but about establishing operational design standards for an entire network.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: Bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Design, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Experience: 8+ years of progressive UX/product design experience, with a demonstrable track record of leading design for complex digital products and systems.

Required Skills:

• Proven leadership in UX/product design, evidenced by a portfolio showcasing high-level craft and strategic thinking across challenging product landscapes.

• Deep domain expertise in the payments or fintech industry, with a strong preference for direct experience in cross-border, international, or multi-currency payment flows.

• Comprehensive understanding of payment systems, including rails, cross-border mechanics, the role of intermediaries, and how regulatory compliance influences user experience.

• Experience designing within a platform or network model, where influence over the end-user surface is achieved through ecosystem partners rather than direct control.

• Advanced proficiency in Figma for design, wireframing, and prototyping.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex design concepts clearly, precisely, and persuasively to both design and non-design audiences.

• Demonstrated experience in authoring and disseminating UX guidelines or design standards intended for external partners or a wider ecosystem.

• Strong visual design sensibility and a keen eye for detail in user interface design. Preferred Skills:

• Prior experience within a major payments network, money transfer operator, or global digital wallet (e.g., Wise, PayPal, Remitly, Western Union, Visa, Mastercard, or similar).

• Familiarity with stablecoin or blockchain-based payment infrastructure and its unique user experience implications.

• Specific experience designing for remittance services or cross-border money movement, with an understanding of the human and cultural nuances of international financial transfers.

• Knowledge of compliance UX patterns, including Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) flows, sanctions screening, and disclosure requirements.

• Previous design leadership experience, such as guiding junior designers, facilitating design critiques, or setting the direction for a design workstream.

• Basic understanding of Webflow or front-end development technologies (HTML/CSS).

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on "platform or network model" and "authoring UX guidelines or design standards for external or partner consumption" strongly indicates a need for skills related to operationalizing design principles across multiple entities, which is a key function in revenue and sales operations contexts for ensuring system-wide adoption and consistency.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• A comprehensive online portfolio or document showcasing leadership-level UX design craft and strategic thinking.

• End-to-end UX case studies that detail the problem, your process, design decisions, and measurable outcomes, with a particular focus on complex financial products.

• Examples of wireframes, user flows, and detailed interaction designs for sophisticated digital products.

• Demonstrations of experience in developing and implementing UX guidelines or design standards for external stakeholders.

• Evidence of working within platform or network business models, illustrating how design influenced an ecosystem. Process Documentation:

• Case studies should clearly articulate the design process from initial research and concept exploration through to detailed interaction design and the establishment of design standards.

• Detail how user research and usability testing were integrated into the design process to inform decisions and iterate on solutions.

• Showcase the methodology used to translate complex financial mechanics and compliance requirements into user-friendly experiences.

• Documentation should highlight the collaborative process with product, engineering, and partner institutions to ensure alignment and successful implementation of design frameworks.

• Evidence of the impact of your design work, ideally with metrics that demonstrate improvements in user adoption, operational efficiency, or partner