Head of Product Design

BUILD A SAFER WORLD. TRM Labs provides AI-powered intelligence solutions that help public and private sector agencies investigate and disrupt crime. TRM's platforms enable investigators to trace illicit activity, build cases, and construct operating pictures of threat networks. Leading agencies and businesses worldwide rely on TRM to make the world safer and more secure. We're looking for a Head of Product Design who understands that this role is not coordination. It's craft and talent, at scale, and it's a player-coach role: you'll still be doing design work yourself, not just running the team that does it. Your job will be to build a design organization with a real point of view: how design should run day to day, how it drives product and business outcomes, and how it leads both humans and AI agents toward better decisions. AI is a genuine collaborator here, not a curiosity, and it's the differentiator we want the industry to notice — but it sits on top of strong design fundamentals, not in place of them. You'll lead five designers today, and you'll be the reason that team, and what it produces, keeps compounding. Design at TRM doesn't wait for a brief. It shapes what gets built, sits inside product decisions from the first sketch, and sets a bar the rest of the industry watches. WHAT YOU'LL OWN - Make TRM's product design team known as an agentic powerhouse, internally and across the industry - Make design's day-to-day impact visible across the company, not just at launch - Attract, hire, and develop top design talent, with real attention to each designer's individual growth, not just team output - Set and manage team priorities, coordinating resources across the product portfolio - Be a thought leader in agentic design, both internally and externally HOW YOU'LL WORK Recruiting: You'll know what great design talent looks like before it shows up on a resume, and you'll know it isn't always "10 years in Figma." You'll build the bench, not inherit it: sourcing, closing, onboarding, and coaching designers who are good into designers who are great. You'll also make the hard calls when someone on the team isn't leveling up. Prioritizing: A product design team's biggest risk is spending its best people on the wrong thing, not bad taste. You'll set priorities across competing pods and defend them, even when a stakeholder pushes back. Resourcing decisions will be yours to make, and yours to be accountable for. Directing humans and agents: You have a point of view on how design should run: process, craft, and how decisions tie to business outcomes. AI layers on top of that, not in place of it — you'll be in the file yourself, not directing from the sidelines. TRM's product increasingly means an agent doing the work, so you're defining how a human trusts it. Evangelizing: Design's value doesn't stay invisible. You'll make sure Sales, Engineering, and the exec team see what design actually produces day to day, not just at launch: the decisions it improves, the deals it helps close, the problems it heads off before they reach a customer. Externally, you'll represent TRM's point of view on agentic design in talks, in writing, in the design community. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Player-coach. You still design, not just direct design. Point to something you personally shipped last week: a flow you built, a scrappy prototype that settled a real decision fast, or feedback you gave directly in the file rather than in a review meeting. People leadership. You've built or grown a successful product design team before, not just managed one you inherited, and you've run a team against more demand than headcount, making real trade-offs when priorities required it. You manage designers as individuals, not a collective — you know their growth areas, and you can point to one whose performance changed because of something you did. Taste. You know what good looks like across visual design, interaction design, and systems thinking, and you can explain why something is wrong in a sentence a designer can act on. You're not precious about your own past decisions. You kill work that doesn't clear the bar, including your own. Agentic fluency. AI already does real work in your process, not just your team's: prototyping, critique, production, and the skills or plugins you've built and shipped to get there. You can walk us through a workflow you've actually built. HARD REQUIREMENTS - 7+ years as a practicing product designer, including 3+ years directly managing a design team - Has built or grown a successful product design team at a B2B SaaS company: hiring, developing, and retaining designers, not just inheriting a roster - Already designs with AI tools as part of a real workflow (prototyping, critique, or production) and can demo it - Experience designing product surfaces where AI or automation does real work on a user's behalf, or a clear point of view on how that design problem differs from traditional UI design DEAL BREAKERS - Design leaders who've stopped producing design work themselves and only review, direct, or approve it - Design leaders who measure success in screens shipped or design-system components maintained - Anyone who treats AI as a mood board tool rather than something already load-bearing in how their team works - Leaders who've only managed process (roadmaps, rituals, standups) without a track record of raising the craft bar themselves ABOUT THE TEAM You'll report directly to the VP of Product and lead a team of five product designers. Product Design sits alongside Product Management, Product Marketing, and TRM Academy inside the Product org. You'll partner closely with PM and PMM pods, embedded in the same discovery and launch cycles they run, and work just as directly with Sales, Customer Success, and Engineering, so design moves at the same speed as the rest of the team. WHAT TRM SPEED LOOKS LIKE IN THIS ROLE - A stakeholder needs competing concepts by end of day. Instead of assigning it and waiting until tomorrow, you'll generate three AI-assisted concept variants yourself within the hour, then hand your team the sharpest one to refine. - Two designers on different pods independently solve the same interaction problem two different ways. You'll catch it, and by the end of the week there'll be one documented pattern in the design system with both flows updated. - A candidate doesn't have a conventional 10-year portfolio, but ships full working prototypes with AI tooling faster than most senior designers ship static mockups. You'll make the offer that week. LIFE AT TRM We are building a safer world. That promise shows up in how we work every day. TRM moves quickly. We are a high velocity, high ownership team that expects clarity, follow-through, and impact. People who thrive here are energized by hard problems, experimentation, and continuous feedback. If something takes months elsewhere, it will ship here in days. Our work sits at the intersection of AI, national security, and fighting crime. The problems are complex, the stakes are real, and the environment evolves quickly. The pace and intensity of the work reflect the importance of the mission. As a result, the way we operate requires a high level of ownership, adaptability, collaboration, and creative problem-solving. At TRM, you should expect: - Priorities and targets to change quickly as we experiment and iterate - Work that often requires operating with a high degree of ambiguity - A high level of personal ownership and accountability - Close collaboration across teams and functions - Frequent, high-touch communication - Creative problem solving and out-of-the-box thinking - A pace that rewards urgency, adaptability, and outcomes This environment is energizing for people who enjoy building, solving hard problems, and making progress in situations that are not always fully defined. It also requires comfort navigating ambiguity, adjusting course as new information emerges, and maintaining focus and positivity in a fast-moving and intense environment. We also recognize that this style of operating is not for everyone. If you are primarily optimizing for predictability or a consistently balanced workload, we encourage you to use the interview process to pressure test whether this environment is truly the right fit. We want teammates who thrive here, not just survive here. At the same time, many people find this work deeply rewarding. If you are excited by meaningful problems, motivated by ambitious goals, and energized by working alongside mission-driven colleagues, there is a good chance you will find TRM to be an exceptional place to grow and contribute. Learn more: Interviewing at TRM: How We Hire and What Success Looks Like https://www.trmlabs.com/resources/blog/interviewing-at-trm-how-we-hire-and-what-success-looks-like   AI FLUENCY AT TRM AI fluency is a baseline expectation at TRM. We believe AI meaningfully changes how top performers operate. We expect every team member to use AI to accelerate and reimagine their craft, not just automate surface tasks. At TRM, AI fluency means you are among the top 10 percent of operators in your function in how you apply AI to: - Accelerate repeatable workflows - Structure and solve problems - Improve output quality - Increase speed and leverage You will be evaluated on applied AI fluency during the interview process. LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES We hire and grow against three leadership principles. They’re the standards for how we operate, treat each other, and make decisions. - Impact-Oriented Trailblazer: We put customers first and move with speed, focus, and adaptability. We treat every plan like an experiment – test, ship, measure, and iterate quickly. - Master Craftsperson: We care deeply about our craft. We balance speed with high standards, own outcomes end‑to‑end, and invest in getting better everyday. - Inspiring Colleague: We add clarity and energy, not noise. We bring humility, candor, and a one‑team mindset — giving and receiving feedback to make the team stronger. JOIN OUR MISSION At TRM we care deeply about our craft. We are looking for individuals who want their work to matter, who experiment with speed and rigor, and who take pride in building a safer world for billions of people. If you’re excited by TRM’s mission but don’t check every box, we encourage you to apply — we hire for slope, judgment, and the will to learn fast. TRM is a Series C company with $220M in total funding, backed by Goldman Sachs, Bessemer, Y Combinator, Thoma Bravo, and others. Headquartered in San Francisco, TRM operates as a distributed-first company with hubs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., London, and Singapore. PRIVACY POLICY AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION By submitting your application, you agree to allow TRM Labs to process your personal information in accordance with our Privacy Policy https://www.trmlabs.com/policies/privacy-policy. We collect the information you provide (such as your resume, work history, and contact details) solely for the purpose of evaluating your candidacy for current and future roles at TRM. Because our hiring cycles for certain positions may span 24 to 36 months, we retain your personal information for up to 36 months from the date of your application. After that period, your data is deleted unless a different retention period is required or permitted by law. If you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction with applicable data protection laws, you have the right to access, correct, or request deletion of your personal data at any time before that period ends. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@trmlabs.com. To notify TRM Labs that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQL…