Head of Product Design

About Stellic

At Stellic, we empower universities to transform the student experience, helping millions of students navigate their academic journeys with clarity and confidence. As a fast-growing Series A/B startup, we are scaling our team to serve more institutions worldwide—while staying deeply committed to our mission, values, and high-performance culture.

Today, we are partnered with universities across 7 countries — including top institutions like Cornell, Columbia University, and Ohio State University — to empower 1M+ students to take control of their academic journey with clarity, confidence, and purpose. Our platform gives students the tools they need to plan ahead, stay on track, and succeed, from day one through graduation

About the Role

Are you a design leader who can float easily between vision and hands-on design work? Are you a creative genius who is passionate about consumer-grade user experiences AND the synthesis, transformation and simplification of complex data? Do you gravitate towards mission-centric products that change the lives of every day people? The Head of Product Design role at Stellic is an opportunity to shape the future of the student experience in higher ed. As leader of our product design team, you’ll own the end to end design process — work closely with the founders, PMs, engineers from concept to delivery. You’ll do this at a fast pace, high-growth, mission-driven series A startup in enterprise SaaS.

We have found true product/market fit and we are now taking it to the next level. As a player-coach, you will own the end to end design experience for large product areas — work closely with the PMs to define and design experiences, and turn it into reality with our engineering teams in the US and Pakistan. 

This role is hybrid remote and located in San Mateo 3 days per week.

What you'll do:

• Lead, manage and mentor a small team of talented, passionate designers, providing guidance on projects, career development, and fostering a culture of design excellence.
• Own significant product design initiatives while balancing individual contribution with team leadership responsibilities.
• Drive the evolution of our design system, processes, and best practices across the organization.
• Work closely with Product and Engineering leads to align design strategy with business goals and technical capabilities.
• Guide the team in tackling complex product design challenges by synthesizing business, technology, and user needs into simple, holistic solutions.
• Build and maintain strong partnerships across departments to elevate design's impact throughout the organization.
• Manage resource allocation and project prioritization across the design team while maintaining high quality standards.

What you'll need:

• 8+ years of product design experience, with at least 3 years of design team management experience.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end design leadership for complex enterprise products.
• Ability to execute on end-to-end complex design projects in collaboration with engineering and product.
• Experience building and mentoring high-performing design teams while remaining hands-on with design work.
• Track record of establishing design processes, systems, and standards that scale.
• Proven ability to lead user research initiatives and translate insights into strategic design directions.
• Excellence in visual design with the ability to guide others in creating cohesive, delightful experiences.
• Strong communication skills and experience presenting to executive stakeholders.

Why Join:

• Be part of a customer-centric team that is addressing the core issues in higher education via an expandable platform that is overwhelming loved by students and valued by administrators
• The opportunity to join at the ground level of a promising and developing organization, and build/lead a team critically responsible for its growth
• Work and learn from some of the most prominent thought leaders in higher education and SaaS
• Be part of a culture where ownership, new ideas, and creativity is celebrated
• Generous stock options in a Series A stage startup
• Flexible, outcome-based culture
• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance
• 401K and commuter benefits
• Annual international retreats in some of the most beautiful cities & towns

Salary: $175,000 - 215,000 base salary, plus equity

Stellic is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Our company values diversity and believes diverse teams make innovation possible. We encourage all qualified applicants from any race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or other characteristics to apply.