Head of Design

Full-time · Amsterdam, London, or Cape Town · Hybrid

ABOUT CAPCADE

Capcade is building the collaboration infrastructure for private markets. Fund managers, investors, and the service providers around them run their most important work across scattered tools and email threads. That work covers fundraising, due diligence, investor onboarding, post-close reporting, and structured-product programmes. We replace all of it with one secure, structured environment where people, documents, data, and tasks live in the same place.

The work our users do is high-stakes, data-heavy, and heavily regulated. They are executives at fund administrators, heads of investor relations, dealer desks at global banks, and procurement leaders at large institutions. When the product works well, billions move with more visibility and less risk.

We already have many of the best names in global finance on the platform, including hundreds of the Fortune 500. We are a team of around 50 people across seven jurisdictions. We are small enough that your work shows up the week you ship it, and the problems are real enough to keep the work hard and interesting.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We have built a powerful platform. We now need to build a design discipline to match it. You will be our first design leader, and you will set the craft bar, shape the process, and define how design works alongside product and engineering. You will own how the product feels, not only how it looks, and you will be measured on whether your work changes what users actually do. You will have a real say over the roadmap and over how the product gets built, with direct backing from our COO, CEO, and Head of Product. You will report directly to our CEO.

This is a senior role, but it is not a role where you direct from a distance. Today the design team is one talented individual contributor, and you will shape and grow the team from there. You will be in the work itself, prototyping, designing, and shipping alongside the team, especially early on while it is still small. We are looking for someone who is happy to roll up their sleeves and work hard, and who leads by doing as much as by deciding.

If you are looking for a defined lane and a finished design system to maintain, this is not the right role. If you want to build the function and use modern, AI-native methods to do it, keep reading.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

Own outcomes Work with product and engineering to define the right problems, validate solutions, and ship experiences that move real numbers such as usability, activation, and retention. Stay involved through launch and the iterations that follow.
Prototype with AI You guide the structure, behaviour, and quality while AI helps generate prototypes, and with product and engineers you shape the user experience.
Run research as a way to move faster. Talk to real users, run quick tests, and adjust. Treat research as a tool for resolving disagreement quickly and reaching shared conviction, not just speed for its own sake.
Build the function. Set the craft bar, start a design system, hire as we grow, and raise the quality of everything the team ships.

WHERE YOU WILL FOCUS FIRST

Priorities will shift as the business changes, but these are the areas where you will start:

Data Room and Documents. Improve file browsing, permissions, and document interaction so that complex workflows feel effortless for deal teams.
AI-powered features. Design clear experiences that help users get real value from Capcade's AI, including file analysis, structured data extraction, and automations.
Onboarding and activation. Build flows that help new users understand what Capcade can do and reach their first real success quickly.
Canvas and dashboards. Push our visual workspace further so it becomes a genuine command centre for deal management.
Admin and configuration tooling. Support permissions and workspace management with interfaces that feel clear and professional.

HOW WE WILL MEASURE SUCCESS

This is what good looks like in your first six months:

A clear, shared sense of what good looks like. The bar for craft is visibly higher, both in what ships and in how the rest of the company talks about the product.
The start of a real design system that teams build on, rather than a library that sits unused.
At least one important workflow measurably better for users, with numbers behind it, whether that is faster completion, fewer errors, or stronge

Head of Product Design at Capcade