8+ years of UX/product design experience, with a portfolio showing leadership-level craft and strategic thinking across complex products
Deep domain expertise in payments or fintech - direct experience with cross-border, international, or multi-currency flows strongly preferred
Fluency in payment systems: rails, cross-border mechanics, the role of intermediaries, and how compliance constraints shape user experience
Experience operating in a platform or network model - designing for ecosystems where you influence but do not directly control the end-user surface
Strong visual design sensibility; proficiency in Figma and prototyping tools
Exceptional written and verbal communication - clear, precise, and persuasive with non-design audiences
Experience authoring UX guidelines or design standards for external or partner consumption
E xperience at a payments network, money transfer operator, or global digital wallet (e.g., Wise, PayPal, Remitly, Western Union, Visa, Mastercard, or equivalent)
Exposure to stablecoin or blockchain-based payment infrastructure and its UX implications
Experience designing for remittance or cross-border money movement, understanding the human and cultural dimensions of sending money internationally
Prior design leadership experience: guiding designers, running critiques, or setting workstream direction
Webflow or front-end familiarity (HTML/CSS) as a strong bonus
What we value in this hire:
Works at altitude: sets direction and frames problems, while staying connected to the craft details that make experiences trustworthy
Has a deep intuition for the human dimension of cross-border payments: the anxiety, the stakes, the trust involved when someone sends money to family in another country
Navigates complexity that does not resolve quickly: regulatory constraints, partner dependencies, technical infrastructure , with patience and rigor
Can be the design voice in a room of bankers, engineers, and compliance officers - without losing the user
Feels the weight and the opportunity of this work : genuinely motivated by the chance to bring trust and simplicity of Zelle® to cross-border payments
This is also a team that genuinely enjo
Benefits
Performance bonus
Additional Information
At Early Warning, we've powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.
Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.
Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.
Overall Purpose
Zelle® moves over $1 trillion a year across more than 150 million enrolled accounts. In October 2025, Early Warning Services announced the next chapter: expanding the Zelle® network to enable cross-border money movement - bringing the same speed, trust, and simplicity Americans rely on domestically to international transfers.
As Lead UX Designer on this initiative, you will define design direction for a product that does not yet fully exist. This is not a role for someone who wants to refine what already exists - it is for a designer energized by first-principles thinking, who can hold strategic ambiguity and still produce clear, considered work. In a network business, the quality of your guidelines and frameworks matters as much as the quality of your screens.
You will work as an individual contributor while playing a leading role across the workstream : partnering with product, engineering, strategy, compliance, and partner financial institutions.
Please either link to your online portfolio in your resume or upload a portfolio document as part of your application. The portfolio should showcase relevant design work, including wireframes, and end-to-end UX case studies.
Essential Functions:
Lead UX design direction for the cross-border payments initiative - from research and concept exploration through detailed interaction design and published UX standards
Translate complex payment mechanics: cross-border rails, currency conversion, stablecoin infrastructure, compliance flows, into experiences that feel simple and trustworthy
Develop UX guidelines and frameworks that partner financial institutions implement consistently across the Zelle® network
Commission, participate in, and synthesize user research and usability testing to ground decisions in real behavior
Proactively identify design risks, edge cases, and systemic issues - and drive resolution across teams
Early Warning (zelle) · San Francisco