Discover
The Opportunity
Highline Beta builds and funds ventures in collaboration with global corporate enterprises across a variety of industries.
Our Venture Studio is focused on building new startups - quickly validating new opportunities and launching them alongside top-notch, fundable founders. These startups have access to our corporate partners as well as our venture capital fund. Together, we co-create new startups that have unfair advantages in the market. For example, we recently co-created Relay in collaboration with American Family Insurance to transform how reinsurance deals are made.
As our Head of Design - Venture Studio, you will be working alongside senior leaders from product management and engineering to help startup founders shape the creation of 2-3 new companies each year. You must be passionate about building businesses that solve meaningful problems and drive real impact, balancing both user needs and business outcomes.
What you'll do
Responsibilities
The role:
- Directly lead new product design from initial discovery research through to product launch; this is a hands on leadership role.
- Conduct user interviews and synthesize insights to guide the discovery of meaningful problems and opportunities.
- Creative problem solving and ideation of solutions, bringing together a user-centred approach with business needs and technical factors; you want to help the team succeed in building a business more than making a nice sketch/figma file.
- Design and execute experiments to validate key assumptions around desirability, viability, and feasibility.
- Create low to high fidelity designs as necessary to test value propositions and solutions with users through an iterative feedback process; everything from landing pages to interactive prototypes to MVPs.
- Recruit product designers for founders as they spin out their startups.
- The autonomy to try out new design processes to enhance our practices and capabilities.
What you'll need
Qualifications
Required Skills / Experiences:
- 7+ years of broad experience in product design, including user research, service design, interaction design, and visual design.
- Deep experience with launching new products and / or businesses from scratch.
- Comfort with ambiguity and taking calculated risks with an entrepreneurial mindset.
- A design portfolio that includes a variety of mobile and web applications in both B2C and B2B contexts.
- Experience with hypothesis-driven product development processes working alongside product managers and engineers in an iterative, agile manner.
- Practical knowledge of startup innovation frameworks (e.g. Lean, JTBD, DVF, etc.)
- Experience growing and coaching a team of product designers.
- A growth mindset with the drive and discipline to master your craft every day.
Desired Skills / Experiences:
- Some experience with basic front end web development (e.g. HTML, CSS) and / or no code web development (e.g. Webflow).
- Some experience with brand design and development.
- Some experience building AI products, conversation-based UIs, and / or blockchain applications.
- Active member of the design community.
We're looking for
Core Skills
A little bit about us
Highline Beta
At Highline Beta, we celebrate our inclusive work environment and welcome members of all backgrounds and perspectives to apply. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations and will work with you to meet your needs. If you are a person with a disability and require assistance during the application process, please don't hesitate to reach out!