Design Lead

Join our team and accelerate your career. Life insurance is a complex and consequential purchase that impacts hundreds of millions of Americans. With our powerful and integrated digital tools, expert support, and leading insurance products, we empower advisors to better serve their clients, grow their businesses, and bring the future of the industry to life. We are a high-growth, AI-driven brokerage backed by $35M from top-tier investors, including Thrive Capital (major investors in OpenAI, SpaceX, Stripe, Instagram, Spotify, and Slack), New York Life, and Northwestern Mutual. Join a passionate team of product-minded technologists and insurance professionals who are at the leading edge of a massive industry. Make a tangible difference in people's lives and help deliver our mission to help everyone protect what matters most through advanced technology and tailored advice. This is a senior individual contributor role with leadership scope. Depending on the person, the role can grow into a design leader over time or work in support of design leadership as we scale the team.

What You'll Do:

Drive design and user experience across Modern Life’s product and brand presence

Define, launch and iterate solutions that are clear, usable, and elegant

Translate complexity into clarity in everything you touch, from research to pixels

Push the bleeding edge of your approach and tools as AI capabilities continue to evolve

Collaborate closely with cross-functional team from early concept through execution

Direct and get the most out of work from other designers where needed, including external design freelancers — scoping, briefing, reviewing, and shipping

Your Impact:

Enable our customers—life insurance advisors—to serve their clients more easily by delivering user experiences which improve the process of buying and selling insurance

Influence product and company direction by driving design decisions that align user needs with business priorities, working closely with a tight-knit, fast-moving cross-functional team

Raise the quality bar through thoughtful critique, high standards, and attention to detail across product, brand, and marketing touchpoints

Contribute to building a culture of customer-centricism across the organization which results in consistently high customer satisfaction rates

Continue to develop the design practice and approach in a scalable way

About You:

6+ years of experience in digital product design, ideally including time on an in-house team

A portfolio showing your ability to define, execute and iterate impactful design solutions

Curiosity and experimentation mindset; actively exploring how new tools can help your work

Driven by tenacious problem-solving, deliver viable, desirable, feasible solutions

Leadership experience or clear leadership aptitude; comfortable directing the work of other designers (including freelancers) and giving them what they need to be productive

Systems thinker comfortable applying a defined system and seizing opportunities to evolve it

Experience working with a refined brand; able to execute with visual finesse, uphold guidelines and apply good taste to design solutions

Highly collaborative work style with stakeholders and peers

Driven to build life insurance domain expertise through self-study, user research, pairing with internal subject matter experts

Based in NYC and open to working from our SoHo office - in person 4 days a week

Bonus Points:

You have experience and interest in working with complex B2B workflows and systems

You are familiar with Service Design methods; experience working cross-channel

You have formally managed or mentored other designers, or led freelance/agency partners