Head of Design

Allocate; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 225,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision

401(k)

PTO

Job summary

Allocate is seeking a senior design leader to own and grow the design function, reporting to the CEO and collaborating with product and engineering leadership. This hands-on role requires shaping the design system, brand, and strategy while steering a small team through complex private markets experiences.

The candidate will lead end-to-end design, prototype fast, and ensure the design voice informs executive decisions and product direction in the Palo Alto office.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in product design, including leadership of designers
• Experience building or growing a design function with hiring and coaching
• Hands-on design, prototype-first workflow with design systems and brand

Responsibilities

• Own and shape Allocate's design function and strategy
• Lead design across advisor and GP experiences, end-to-end
• Build and evolve the design system and brand expression
• Hire, mentor, and grow the design team; set levels and growth paths
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and executives to align on client value

Skills

Design leadership

Product design

Figma

Prototype

Design systems

User research

Tools

Figma

Magic Patterns

Anthropic

Job description

About Allocate

Allocate is building the operating system for private markets — wealth advisors and their clients use the platform to access, transact in, and manage private market investments. The platform supports 350+ advisory firms and 1,500+ GP relationships, with $ 5B+ in assets on the platform.

About The Role

This position owns and builds the design function at Allocate, reporting directly to the CEO and working in lockstep with product and engineering leadership.

This is a build role, not a caretaking one. A small team, a working design system, and a live product are already in place. The mandate is to take all three further: set the standard, grow the team, and decide what design owns and how it earns that ownership.

The role stays hands‑on by design. At this stage, the person leading design is still in the work: shaping the hardest flows, prototyping the ideas that must be seen to be understood, sitting in the details when the details matter.

One thing is non‑negotiable: this role starts from the client and works backward. Engineering constraints are inputs to negotiate, not the frame to design inside. The right person asks what will provide advisors and fund managers a great product experience.

Private markets are dense — funds, co‑investments, capital calls, distributions, portfolio reporting. This is the one area where the company isn't hiring someone to learn on the job. Candidates need to already speak this language, because “the difference between a good interface and a great one is knowing what the numbers actually mean to the person reading them.”

Design currently runs on Figma, Magic Patterns, and Anthropic, moving fast from idea to interactive prototype, validating with stakeholders and users, and cutting engineering risk before development starts. Fluency with this workflow is expected, not optional.

WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS

Design is where Allocate's complexity becomes either clarity or friction. In a space this nuanced, a great interface isn't polished on top of the problem — it's “the difference between a client trusting the platform with real capital and bouncing off it.”

The same is true of the brand. Allocate's clients are advisors and family offices deciding whether to move real money through the platform, and every surface either earns that trust or spends it. One person holding a product, system, and brand is how those surfaces start telling the same story.

Impact compounds here — in the quality bar set, the system strengthened, and the designers who level up because of who was leading them.

What You’ll Own

• Product design across Allocate — the advisor and GP experience, unified and end‑to‑end

• Private markets knowledge, applied directly and deepened continuously, so decisions are grounded in understanding rather than assumption

• The quality bar, held with real mechanisms, not vibes: a clear definition of done, pre‑launch usability gates, a standing view of friction in the live product

• The hardest problems, end to end — research, framing, prototyping, handoff

• The team — hire, define levels and growth paths, coach through feedback, reviews, and 1:1s

• The roadmap, alongside product and engineering leadership — defining problems well, forcing tradeoffs early rather than at handoff

• A seat in product strategy, not just product execution — design's voice in executive conversations, framed around client value and business outcomes

• The design system — consistency as the default, speed as the byproduct

• Brand expression across the marketing site, campaigns, launch moments, and client‑facing collateral

• A validation habit built for this size: fast, evidence‑led, prototype‑first, actually used

• AI‑assisted tools for research synthesis, exploration, and prototyping — freeing the team for the judgment, taste, and craft only people bring

• How design works with the rest of the company — rituals, tooling, process, added only where they earn their keep

Who You Are

• 10+ years in product design, several of them leading and managing designers

• Have built or substantially grown a design function — hiring, leveling, coaching, setting practice, not just running a queue

• Led distributed designers and held craft and cohesion high without needing to be in the same room

• Still hands‑on, and want to stay that way — looking for a role where leading and making are the same job

• Strong systems thinker, with a design system carried through real growth

• Comfortable across product and brand — may lean one way, but can hold both and know when each is the lever

• Direct experience designing for private markets, or an adjacent institutional finance domain dense enough to demand real mastery — fund structures, capital calls, distributions, and portfolio reporting are already familiar ground

• Prototype‑first: fluent in Figma and Magic Patterns, ready to build in Claude when code is the fastest path — not an engineer, but rarely blocked by code

• Pragmatic and experiment‑friendly — multiple options, early validation, evidence over opinion

• Strong collaborator with engineers, PMs, and stakeholders — clear and flexible

• A strong communicator and storyteller — in a 1:1, an exec room, or in front of clients

• Based in the Bay Area, or ready to be — this role is in the Palo Alto office

WHY THIS IS WORTH YOUR TIME

This is the role for someone who wants to own design at a company building something new: leading the work, shaping the system, defining the brand, and building the team — while turning one of finance's most complex corners into something people actually want to use. And at this stage, the person who owns how clients experience Allocate has a real voice in what Allocate becomes.

Essential Values & Culture

• Providing our clients with a world‑class experience is our number one priority. We obsessively search for ways to improve the experience for our clients and partners. This requires extraordinary response times, proactivity, and ensuring that everything we do — from product strategy to offline communications — reflects a top‑tier client experience.

• Challenge convention: Instead of detailing all the reasons why an idea may not work, we constantly question things to determine how a viable idea may be put into motion.

• Commitment to continuous improvement: We find ways to personally scale each day by pushing ourselves up the learning curve.

• Meritocracy, not politics: We place the utmost value on results and rewards through merit, not reward actions driven by political agendas or behavior.

• Civil Discourse is embraced: We believe open, intellectually curious conversations are required to consistently arrive at the best decisions. Respect is paramount in our dealings with one another, but our mission is always to get the right answer collectively, not to be right.

• Embrace technological change: We adopt tools and techniques that make us faster, smarter, and better. We stay open to innovation, especially around AI and automation, and drop outdated methods without hesitation. This includes actively integrating AI‑assisted tools into your daily workflow and staying current as the landscape evolves. Complacency kills progress — we value adaptability and curiosity.

Additional Details

• Hybrid Position - 3 days/week in Palo Alto office required

• Travel may be required for company offsites

• Broadband internet connection required

• Location: All I-9 eligible candidates will be considered

• Salary: $225,000 - $260,000+ base, with bonus and equity eligibility

• Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision; 401(k); and responsible vacation time (PTO)

• Employment: Full‑time

• Reports to: CEO and Co-Founder

The base pay offered will be determined based on the candidate's experience, location, skills, training, certifications, education, internal equity, and market data. Total compensation may also include a discretionary performance‑based bonus. We do not anticipate that candidates hired will begin at the top of the range or above, though this may occur on a case‑by‑case basis.