Head Of Design Jobs
Head Of Design jobs are open across tech, fintech, healthcare, consumer goods, and agencies, at every level from senior designer to VP, with specializations in product design, brand identity, and UX leadership. Find a role that fits from the openings below and apply directly.
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Who We Are
Semafor is a global news platform for an increasingly complex world in which consumers are overwhelmed by too many news sources and unsure what to trust. We are building Semafor to enable world-class journalists to deliver reporting and insights with rigor in journalistic forms that ensure a new level of transparency. Our editors and reporters distill the most important stories from all over in formats that uncover the forces shaping the stories, explain the interests behind polarizing narratives, and replenish the stock of shared facts. As a global platform, Semafor recognizes that smart people can disagree and that informed readers need to understand alternative points of view from competing centers of power and culture in a multi-polar world. Want to join us? Read on.
About This Role
Semafor is seeking a Head of Design & Experience to build Semafor’s first design function and lead the next evolution of Semafor’s visual identity and experience system across brand, editorial, product, and live journalism platforms. This role will own how Semafor shows up across every major touchpoint: newsletters, digital products, app, editorial franchises, marketing, campaigns, partnerships, corporate materials, and physical convenings and events, including Semafor World Economy, Silicon Valley & the World, and 50+ other forums and roundtables. This is a creative leadership role. The ideal candidate will set Semafor’s design vision and elevate our ambition, while orchestrating execution across a variety of design disciplines. They bring strong creative judgment, systems thinking, and proven ability to lead and develop a design function within a complex organization. They'll partner closely with peer leaders across Brand, Events, Product, Editorial, and Marketing while leading design strategically. This person must be able to translate Semafor’s brand strategy into a cohesive design system that works across screens, stages, spaces, products, and live environments. They should bring the creative judgment to elevate the brand, the technical knowledge to guide execution, and the operational discipline to move ambitious work from concept through production at a high standard and high velocity. The role requires someone who can think systemically and strategically: building design languages that are distinctive, scalable, and ownable, while ensuring every expression of Semafor feels sophisticated, consistent, modern, and unmistakably connected to the brand.
Key Responsibilities
Brand Systems & Integration:
- Own and evolve Semafor's visual identity as the primary expression of brand and business strategy
- Build and govern a unified design system that scales across digital products, editorial surfaces, brand and marketing, and live experiences
- Ensure Semafor's core brand and sub-brands integrate coherently across every touchpoint — digital, editorial, events, marketing, and partnerships
Design & Creative Direction:
- Set the creative bar across all Semafor design work and serve as senior arbiter of creative quality and brand coherence
- Provide art direction, feedback, and approval at decision points across digital products, editorial design, brand campaigns, and events
- Lead the creative system for Semafor events across staging and physical environmental builds, stage and motion graphics, signage and wayfinding, digital and printed promotional materials, partner assets, and onsite digital surfaces
- Ensure live experiences feel cohesive, premium, navigable, technically polished, and unmistakably connected to Semafor’s brand and journalism
- Own the visual design system for Semafor’s core reader products, including newsletters, app, website surfaces, editorial franchises, special reports, recurring formats, and new digital products
- Establish Semafor's design as a clear source of competitive differentiation in a crowded media landscape
Design Leadership:
- Build and develop the design function - hire, structure, and develop a team that can span product, brand, editorial, and experiential design disciplines
- Deepen Semafor’s design community of practice and clarify the bar for craft excellence
- Establish design workflows, decision-making processes, and quality standards across embedded and centralized teams
- Build and manage a vendor bench across motion, illustration, editorial, experiential, and scenic/fabrication work
- Lead cross-functional partnerships with Product, Editorial, Events, and Marketing — both through embedded designer relationships and direct peer collaboration
- Champion design as a strategic discipline at the leadership level, ensuring design considerations shape business and editorial decisions
Experience & Skills
- 15+ years of experience in design or creative leadership across digital, brand, editorial, or experiential disciplines — ideally in media, premium content, or comparable sectors. Significant experience leading design spanning design disciplines (e.g., digital and physical environments), including brand systems, newsletters, apps, websites, live events, stage environments, signage, wayfinding, and built experiences
- Proven ability to own and evolve a sophisticated visual identity system across a complex, multi-platform organization
- Deep understanding of digital publishing, editorial products, reader experience, UX, typography, information design, newsletter design, app design, and reusable product design systems
- Demonstrated experience designing for premium live experiences, executive convenings, conferences, brand environments, or large-scale event platforms
- Technical fluency in physical production, including scenic design, fabrication, AV, lighting, motion graphics, materials, environmental graphics, installation, and onsite execution
- Experience sourcing, RFPing, briefing, managing, and holding accountable external agencies, with a bonus if experience overseeing production vendors, fabricators, motion designers, product designers, AV partners, and experiential specialists
- Minimum of 5+ years of management experience, with a record of developing design talent, leading high-performing creative teams, and establishing clear standards of excellence
- Strong systems thinker, with the ability to create scalable design languages, templates, guidelines, workflows, and governance across brand, product, editorial, and event touchpoints
- Exceptional creative judgment, with high standards for typography, hierarchy, layout, motion, materials, spatial design, usability, and finish
- Strong cross-functional leadership skills, with experience partnering across Brand, Editorial, Product, Events, Marketing, Sales, Partnerships, Production, and senior leadership
- Strong project management and prioritization skills, with the ability to lead multiple high-priority workstreams from concept through execution
- Experience managing budgets, scopes, timelines, production schedules, creative reviews, approval workflows, and onsite
- Entrepreneurial mindset with a builder’s orientation, high standards for quality, and deep ownership of outcomes
- Bachelor’s degree, preferably in graphic design, communication design, product design, architecture, environmental design, industrial design, or a related field. Advanced degree a plus
- Willingness to work in person four days per week in New York and travel domestically and internationally as needed.
- Salary Range is $220,000 - $240,000 base salary plus annual performance bonus.
Additional Job Details
Semafor offers a Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO) policy to our full-time, salaried employees who may take paid time off as-needed without a prescribed limit or defined balance.
Semafor, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer and enthusiastically encourages people from all backgrounds and experiences to apply. Semafor, Inc. will consider all applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.
Who We Are
Semafor is a global news platform for an increasingly complex world in which consumers are overwhelmed by too many news sources and unsure what to trust. We are building Semafor to enable world-class journalists to deliver reporting and insights with rigor in journalistic forms that ensure a new level of transparency. Our editors and reporters distill the most important stories from all over in formats that uncover the forces shaping the stories, explain the interests behind polarizing narratives, and replenish the stock of shared facts. As a global platform, Semafor recognizes that smart people can disagree and that informed readers need to understand alternative points of view from competing centers of power and culture in a multi-polar world. Want to join us? Read on.
About This Role
Semafor is seeking a Head of Design & Experience to build Semafor’s first design function and lead the next evolution of Semafor’s visual identity and experience system across brand, editorial, product, and live journalism platforms. This role will own how Semafor shows up across every major touchpoint: newsletters, digital products, app, editorial franchises, marketing, campaigns, partnerships, corporate materials, and physical convenings and events, including Semafor World Economy, Silicon Valley & the World, and 50+ other forums and roundtables. This is a creative leadership role. The ideal candidate will set Semafor’s design vision and elevate our ambition, while orchestrating execution across a variety of design disciplines. They bring strong creative judgment, systems thinking, and proven ability to lead and develop a design function within a complex organization. They'll partner closely with peer leaders across Brand, Events, Product, Editorial, and Marketing while leading design strategically. This person must be able to translate Semafor’s brand strategy into a cohesive design system that works across screens, stages, spaces, products, and live environments. They should bring the creative judgment to elevate the brand, the technical knowledge to guide execution, and the operational discipline to move ambitious work from concept through production at a high standard and high velocity. The role requires someone who can think systemically and strategically: building design languages that are distinctive, scalable, and ownable, while ensuring every expression of Semafor feels sophisticated, consistent, modern, and unmistakably connected to the brand.
Key Responsibilities
Brand Systems & Integration:
- Own and evolve Semafor's visual identity as the primary expression of brand and business strategy
- Build and govern a unified design system that scales across digital products, editorial surfaces, brand and marketing, and live experiences
- Ensure Semafor's core brand and sub-brands integrate coherently across every touchpoint — digital, editorial, events, marketing, and partnerships
Design & Creative Direction:
- Set the creative bar across all Semafor design work and serve as senior arbiter of creative quality and brand coherence
- Provide art direction, feedback, and approval at decision points across digital products, editorial design, brand campaigns, and events
- Lead the creative system for Semafor events across staging and physical environmental builds, stage and motion graphics, signage and wayfinding, digital and printed promotional materials, partner assets, and onsite digital surfaces
- Ensure live experiences feel cohesive, premium, navigable, technically polished, and unmistakably connected to Semafor’s brand and journalism
- Own the visual design system for Semafor’s core reader products, including newsletters, app, website surfaces, editorial franchises, special reports, recurring formats, and new digital products
- Establish Semafor's design as a clear source of competitive differentiation in a crowded media landscape
Design Leadership:
- Build and develop the design function - hire, structure, and develop a team that can span product, brand, editorial, and experiential design disciplines
- Deepen Semafor’s design community of practice and clarify the bar for craft excellence
- Establish design workflows, decision-making processes, and quality standards across embedded and centralized teams
- Build and manage a vendor bench across motion, illustration, editorial, experiential, and scenic/fabrication work
- Lead cross-functional partnerships with Product, Editorial, Events, and Marketing — both through embedded designer relationships and direct peer collaboration
- Champion design as a strategic discipline at the leadership level, ensuring design considerations shape business and editorial decisions
Experience & Skills
- 15+ years of experience in design or creative leadership across digital, brand, editorial, or experiential disciplines — ideally in media, premium content, or comparable sectors. Significant experience leading design spanning design disciplines (e.g., digital and physical environments), including brand systems, newsletters, apps, websites, live events, stage environments, signage, wayfinding, and built experiences
- Proven ability to own and evolve a sophisticated visual identity system across a complex, multi-platform organization
- Deep understanding of digital publishing, editorial products, reader experience, UX, typography, information design, newsletter design, app design, and reusable product design systems
- Demonstrated experience designing for premium live experiences, executive convenings, conferences, brand environments, or large-scale event platforms
- Technical fluency in physical production, including scenic design, fabrication, AV, lighting, motion graphics, materials, environmental graphics, installation, and onsite execution
- Experience sourcing, RFPing, briefing, managing, and holding accountable external agencies, with a bonus if experience overseeing production vendors, fabricators, motion designers, product designers, AV partners, and experiential specialists
- Minimum of 5+ years of management experience, with a record of developing design talent, leading high-performing creative teams, and establishing clear standards of excellence
- Strong systems thinker, with the ability to create scalable design languages, templates, guidelines, workflows, and governance across brand, product, editorial, and event touchpoints
- Exceptional creative judgment, with high standards for typography, hierarchy, layout, motion, materials, spatial design, usability, and finish
- Strong cross-functional leadership skills, with experience partnering across Brand, Editorial, Product, Events, Marketing, Sales, Partnerships, Production, and senior leadership
- Strong project management and prioritization skills, with the ability to lead multiple high-priority workstreams from concept through execution
- Experience managing budgets, scopes, timelines, production schedules, creative reviews, approval workflows, and onsite
- Entrepreneurial mindset with a builder’s orientation, high standards for quality, and deep ownership of outcomes
- Bachelor’s degree, preferably in graphic design, communication design, product design, architecture, environmental design, industrial design, or a related field. Advanced degree a plus
- Willingness to work in person four days per week in New York and travel domestically and internationally as needed.
- Salary Range is $220,000 - $240,000 base salary plus annual performance bonus.
Additional Job Details
Semafor offers a Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO) policy to our full-time, salaried employees who may take paid time off as-needed without a prescribed limit or defined balance.
Semafor, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer and enthusiastically encourages people from all backgrounds and experiences to apply. Semafor, Inc. will consider all applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.
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Find Head Of Design JobsHead Of Design Job Market
A snapshot from current openings nationwide, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- Ashley Stewart2
- suno2
- Altana Technologies1
- Amazon1
- Anthropic1
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software9
- Construction & Real Estate2
- Consulting & Professional Services2
- Education2
- Electronics & Hardware2
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in head of design jobs.
- 8 or more years of design experience with at least 3 in a leadership role
- Proven experience managing and growing a team of designers
- Strong command of Figma and prototyping and design system tooling
- Demonstrated ability to align design strategy with product and business goals
- Experience partnering cross-functionally with product management and engineering
- Portfolio showing end-to-end product or brand design work at significant scale
Tips for Your Head Of Design Job Search
Show systems thinking, not just craft
Head of design roles demand proof you can build and scale a design practice, not just deliver great work. Your resume should call out team structures you've led, design systems you've created, and how your work connected to business outcomes.
Tailor your portfolio for leadership audiences
Hiring committees for head of design roles include product and engineering leaders who care about process and impact, not polish. Lead each case study with the problem, your decision-making, and the measurable result before showing any visuals.
Apply early to roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists head of design openings from across the United States in one place, so you can find roles that match and apply directly to each listing.
Target companies at the right design maturity
A head of design role at a Series A startup means building the function from scratch, while a late-stage or enterprise role means managing managers. Read job descriptions carefully for phrases like 'first design hire' or 'scaling the team' to gauge which situation you're walking into.
Prepare a 30-60-90 day plan for interviews
Final-round interviews for design leadership roles often include a presentation to an exec panel. Walking in with a drafted onboarding plan, covering how you'd assess the current design culture, align with product, and set early priorities, signals executive readiness.
Negotiate scope before you negotiate title
Before accepting an offer, confirm your reporting line, whether you'll have hiring authority, and what the design team's current budget looks like. Misaligned expectations on these points are the most common reason head of design hires leave within 18 months.
Head Of Design Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies are hiring the most head of designs?
The companies hiring the most head of designs right now include Ashley Stewart, suno, and Altana Technologies, with the largest share of openings in California, New York, and New Jersey, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of June 2026. Demand tends to concentrate in companies scaling their product teams or undergoing a brand refresh.
How many head of design jobs are remote?
About 27% of head of design openings are fully remote or hybrid as of June 2026, reflecting the broad adoption of distributed design teams. Roles focused on digital product and UX tend to offer the most remote flexibility, while brand and in-house agency positions more often require on-site presence for collaboration and creative reviews.
How do you become a head of design?
Most heads of design get there by first mastering individual contributor craft, then taking on lead or principal roles where they manage small teams or own a design domain end-to-end. From there, moving into a design manager or director role builds the people management and cross-functional credibility employers expect. Building a visible body of work, whether through a strong portfolio, public writing, or community involvement, accelerates the path significantly.
Can you get hired as a head of design with limited leadership experience?
Yes, particularly at early-stage startups where you'd be the first or second design hire and formal management experience is less weighted than strong craft and a clear point of view. Emphasize any informal leadership you've done, such as mentoring junior designers, leading design critiques, or driving a design system initiative, and frame your portfolio around decisions and outcomes rather than execution alone.
What does the head of design interview process look like?
The process typically opens with a recruiter screen, followed by a portfolio review with the hiring manager or a senior design leader. From there, expect a working session or case study presentation to a cross-functional panel that often includes product and engineering leaders. Final rounds frequently involve a conversation with the CEO or CPO, and sometimes a paid or unpaid design exercise focused on strategic thinking rather than pixel-level execution.
Where can I find and apply to head of design jobs?
You can find and apply to head of design jobs on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from across the United States. Find roles that match your experience and specialization, then apply directly to each listing from the same place.
See All Head Of Design Jobs
Jump back to the full list of openings and apply to any head of design role that fits.
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