Back to jobs

Design Research & Strategy Lead

San Francisco, CA; Santa Clara, CA; Seattle, WA; New York, NY

The Company You’ll Join

Carta is a platform that helps people manage equity, build businesses, and invest in the companies of tomorrow. Our mission is to unlock the power of equity ownership for more people in more places. 

Carta is trusted by more than 40,000 companies and over two million people in nearly 160 countries to manage cap tables, compensation, and valuations. Carta also supports nearly 7,000 funds and SPVs, and represents nearly $130B in assets under administration. Carta's tender offer solutions have returned $14B to shareholders in secondary transactions. Today, Carta’s platform manages nearly three trillion dollars in equity globally. 

For more information about our offices and culture, check out our Carta careers page.

The Problems You'll Solve

At Carta, our employees set out on a mission to unlock the power of equity ownership for more people in more places. We believe that the problems we solve today unlock the opportunities of tomorrow.

Carta is in search of a Design Research & Strategy Lead who is radically inspired by people, gathers great insights, and can work alongside an exceptional design team creating and shipping innovative digital product experiences across the company. This person is passionate about leading projects, skilled at uncovering human-centered insights, and experienced at translating these insights into opportunities for design and product innovation. Our ideal candidate is savvy, curious, enjoys working cross-functionally, and can effectively communicate and story tell insights to leadership. This person must be a self-starter who can work through ambiguity to lead projects from start to finish. We are looking for someone who can inspire fellow designers and stakeholders, and lead with both user empathy and conviction.

As a Design Research & Strategy Lead, you will play a crucial role throughout the product lifecycle — using research to inspire our design teams, inform rich prototypes, and champion the needs of our Carta users. You’ll uncover insights across many unique customer and user archetypes including: company founders, CFOs, investors, employees vesting equity, law firms, tax experts, and our Carta service and delivery colleagues.

Additionally you will:

  • Lead and own research for diverse product teams through the entire project journey focusing on, but not limited to, how companies, investors, and employees interact, leverage, and use our platform
  • Design, scope, and run user research including research planning, participant recruiting, data analysis, synthesis, and storytelling
  • Utilize strengths in both qualitative and quantitative research methods including usability testing, prototype testing, field studies, data analysis, and survey design
  • Gather rich data, synthesize, and generate insights and opportunities to create more intuitive, useful and usable experiences to generate user advocacy
  • Creatively articulate insights and stories with excellent visualization and communication skills to promote empathy and inspiration
  • Make research findings relevant and impactful for product and design through crafted insights, decks, stories, videos, and testimonials
  • Influence the product strategy and roadmap to ensure we are building with human-centered needs in mind
  • Build and implement new or innovative user research processes and methods to meet Carta’s product delivery goals across desktop, mobile, and offline interactions
  • Define and influence how research and strategy fits into the Product Development Life Cycle
  • Mentor other designers, strategists, and product partners on how to effectively carry out research and gain crucial insights through coaching and technical training.
  • Contribute to building a strong human centered design culture

About You

We are looking for a strong Design Researcher and Strategist to influence and evolve our existing Carta products, explore new product opportunities, and advocate what’s best for our users. This person can drive strategy, ideation, prioritization, problem solving, and product delivery. If you are passionate about building intuitive solutions to complex problems that provide direct value to users, we would love to talk with you. In our search, we’re prioritizing:

  • 8+ years of qualitative research experience
  • Experience drawing from a variety of research methods — interviews, observations, diary studies, prototyping, surveys, user testing, and experiments — at different stages in the design process to inspire early design work, inform the initial opportunity, collect formative feedback to support iteration, and validate a go-to-market solution.
  • Proven ability to use human-centered insight to answer questions of different apertures: from business/product strategy to feature usability 
  • Familiarity with quantitative research methods and data analysis
  • Exceptional communication and storytelling skills that allow you to turn insights, strategy, and early design solutions into artifacts that collaborators will savor (journey maps, vision pieces, manifestos, concept illustrations, design principles).
  • Ability to work flexibly, yet efficiently — exercising a balance between research rigor and design scrappiness.
  • High comfort level with ambiguity; openness to critique from other disciplines and curiosity to learn from a spectrum of perspectives.
  • A strong portfolio of case studies that demonstrates unfailing advocacy for the user highlighting research plans, reports, and artifacts
  • Passion for mentoring teams and teaching others about research
  • Strong system thinker who enjoys diving deep into complexity
  • Nice-to-haves: experience working in finance, enterprise technology, service design and/or the venture capital space 

Salary

Carta’s compensation package includes a market competitive salary, equity for all full time roles, exceptional benefits, and, for applicable roles, commissions plans. Our minimum cash compensation (salary + commission if applicable) range for this role is: 

 $180,000 - $213,000 in [Seattle, WA] 
 $191,250 - $225,000 in [San Francisco, CA; Santa Clara, CA; New York, NY] 

Final offers may vary from the amount listed based on geography, candidate experience and expertise, and other factors.

We are an equal opportunity employer and are committed to providing a positive interview experience for every candidate. If accommodations due to a disability or medical condition are needed, please connect with the recruiter via email. As a company, we value fairness, helpfulness, transparency, leadership and build our teams around these values. Check out our careers page to get to know us better as you think about your next step at Carta.

Important Security Notice for Candidates

Our company has been targeted by individuals creating fake domains similar to ours to scam prospects and candidates. Please note that all official communications from us will come from an @carta.com domain. Be cautious of any requests for sensitive information or payments outside of our official channels. For more information about this type of scam, please review the guidelines provided by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If you encounter any suspicious activity, please report it immediately to recruiting-systems@carta.com.

Awards and Acknowledgements

Companies and funds like Tribe and Pipe build their businesses on Carta. The company has been included on the Forbes World’s Best Cloud Companies, Fast Company's Most Innovative list, and Inc.’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies. We’ve also been recognized as a 2023 Built In Best Place to Work in the U.S., a Muse VIBE Award winner in the Vacation and Time Off category and certified as a Great Place to Work.

Interested in data privacy? Check out our policies on Privacy and CA Candidate Privacy.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Cover Letter

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Select...
Select...

Please note the listed locations for this role are: San Francisco, CA; Santa Clara, CA; Seattle, WA; New York, NY

Select...
Select...
Select...

While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application and interviewing process. We want to understand your personal interest in Carta without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills. Please indicate 'Yes' if you have read and agree.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Carta’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.