Active Targets, Re-Scored by Who Actually Issues the Equity

Thursday, Oct 22. From this pass on, every Stage/equity score goes to the entity that legally issues the shares, not the logo on the job post. Two companies forced the change. Brex closed into Capital One in April; we dropped its pre-acquisition equity thesis in Issue #11, and this pass makes that a standing rule. Then on Oct 15, EvolutionIQ's parent agreed to a take-private that converts unvested equity into fixed cash, and we were still scoring that equity as CCC stock.

If you only read this far:

• Legora goes to the top of the tracker. It has a hot Staff posting in New York and a $550M round announced yesterday.
• Treat any EvolutionIQ equity as a cash schedule. Once the CCC deal closes, its value is fixed.
• Samsara drops to Watch. A listing nearly five years old no longer counts as early post-IPO, and nobody visibly holds its design leadership seat.

What moved since Oct 16

The Why column sorts each change into one of three kinds: event means new evidence since Oct 16, method means we changed how we score, and correction means we had the score wrong.

The prior 3 on Figma was our error; it has been public since July 31, 2025. The EvolutionIQ downgrade is a miss too. The take-private was announced Oct 15, a day before our last pass, and we should have caught it. Anthropic, OpenAI and Stripe had a quiet week, so their drops come entirely from how we now read equity at that size.

How we scored this pass

Role scores use each company's strongest open role. Per-posting rankings live in This Week's Moves.

List order, in every grouping: Act before Watch, then company score, then role score, then the freshest signal.

Freshness. Job postings are hot for 21 days and Watch through day 42. Funding is hot for 14 days. Edits and renames at the same level don't reset a posting's age. A level change on the same requisition does, because it means the company changed what it is hiring for. We date the new search from the first public record of the new level.

Stage/equity, as we're applying it. The rubric gives 3 to pre-IPO Series C–E with meaningful equity, 2 to early post-IPO with growth, and 1 to too early or too late. Four situations needed a stated rule:

• Independent but last priced in 2021–22: 2. A grant struck against a 2021 valuation may start above what the company would fetch today, so the upside is hard to read.
• Private above $50B, running its own tender offers (company-arranged sales of employee shares): 2. You can get cash out, but there is far less room for the stock to multiply.
• Any equity whose value a pending deal will cap: 1.
• Early post-IPO means roughly the first two years after listing, while the stock is still repricing on the company's first public results. After that, public equity scores 1 however fast the company grows; growth gets credited under Trajectory instead.

Independent pre-IPO

Independence settles who issues the equity. It says nothing about how much room that equity has. Only Legora sits cleanly in the Series C–E window. Gusto and Ironclad are carrying 2021–22 prices, while Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe and Ramp are valued high enough that the multiple is mostly behind them. Stripe and OpenAI have run employee sales, Anthropic's was only reported as planned, and we found no Ramp tender. Seven of the nine score Stage 2, so equity rarely separates this group. At Legora it does, and it's a real reason to move now.

1. Legora

A shared AI workspace where law-firm teams research, draft and review documents together (Series E).

• Stage / Capital: Series E, $550M at $8.8B announced Oct 21, led by Atreides. Issuer is Legora, Inc., per its Form D. Headcount not disclosed.
• Value chain: Downstream application built on third-party models. The value sits in law-firm workflow, which puts design in charge of where lawyers check, accept or reject what the model produces.
• Best at: Multi-person review. Several lawyers work the same matter, so handoffs and sign-off are core product surface.
• Signals: NYC Staff Product Designer posted Oct 7 (15 days, hot through Oct 28), still live. The funding is one day old and stays hot through Nov 4.
• Hiring manager: Anton Reimertz, Head of Design, start date unconfirmed. He describes a deliberately small team covering a wide product surface and is publicly hiring in Stockholm and New York. Who the NYC role reports to is unconfirmed.
• Landscape context: Harvey raised at $15.5B in September. Legora is the funded challenger in legal AI and still buying market share, which is usually when design headcount grows (moderate confidence).
• Rubric scores: Company 11/12 (AI 3, Stage 3 new, Design 2, Trajectory 3). Role 14/15 (Comp 2, pay not posted; Scope 3, Craft 3, AI 3, Portfolio 3).
• Verdict: Act. Best combination of score and freshness on this page. Move before Oct 28, when the posting leaves its hot window. Design influence goes to 3 if the NYC role reports directly to Reimertz.

2. Anthropic

Builds the Claude models and the apps, API and Claude Code that sit on them (Series H).

• Stage / Capital: $65B at $965B on May 28. Reuters reported a confidential IPO filing on June 1. A February tender at $350B+ was reported as planned. Whether it happened, and whether new hires can join one, is unconfirmed.
• Value chain: Vertically integrated, model through product. Design scope runs from how the model behaves to developer tooling.
• Best at: Coding agents, and a model built to push back on its user.
• Signals: One design role in its hot window and three more in Watch, all posted between Sept 22 and Oct 8. A recent edit to one of them does not reset its age.
• Hiring manager: Joel Lewenstein, Head of Product Design, at Anthropic since Oct 2023. He describes a team that prototypes in code first. Jenny Wen has moved to Cursor. No successor is named, and we don't know who the open roles report to.
• Landscape context: Wen leading design at Cursor is one more data point on design tools and coding tools merging, with lab-trained designers moving to the code-first side.
• Rubric scores: Company 11/12 (AI 3, Stage 2, was 3; Design 3, Trajectory 3). Role 14/15 (Comp 3, Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 3, Portfolio 3).
• Verdict: Act. Equity is the only weak dimension: tripling from $965B means a company worth about $2.9 trillion. Watch for a named successor to Wen. That opens a fresh window, and a new leader's first 30 days are when the fewest candidates are already in their pipeline.

3. Stripe

Payments infrastructure; Checkout is the hosted payment page buyers see (Checkout role).

• Stage / Capital: Last primary round $6.5B+ at $50B in Mar 2023. Tenders since at $91.5B (Feb 2025) and $159B (Feb 2026) for current and former employees.
• Value chain: Midstream infrastructure. Checkout is the one surface where Stripe meets the buyer directly.
• Best at: Hiding payment complexity behind tools developers like using.
• Signals: Staff Checkout posted Oct 9 (13 days, hot). The AI requirement is about using AI to prototype. Nothing shows the role shapes AI behavior in the product.
• Hiring manager: Katie Dill, Head of Design since at least Mar 2021, has spoken about designing the review process itself. Yuliya Gorlovetsky, Head of Product Design, runs the product-design line; we couldn't establish her tenure. Courtney Drake promoted an earlier Checkout opening. Whether she owns this one is unconfirmed.
• Landscape context: This is the false signal we see most often: a company with a real AI story hiring for a role where AI is a tool the designer uses, while someone else owns the product's AI behavior.
• Rubric scores: Company 10/12 (AI 2, Stage 2, was 3; Design 3, Trajectory 3). Role 12/15 (Comp 3, Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 2, Portfolio 2).
• Verdict: Act, at the threshold. Annual tenders give Stripe the most predictable path to cash in this group. Evidence that Checkout owns AI-driven purchase flows would lift AI exposure to 3.

4. Gusto

Payroll, benefits and HR software for small businesses (designers as builders).

• Stage / Capital: $175M in Aug 2021 at a reported $9.5B. A 2022 extension set no confirmed new price. Issuer is Gusto, Inc.
• Value chain: A payroll system of record that moves money under regulation. Design decides where automation is allowed to touch payroll.
• Best at: Making payroll compliance workable for a five-person company with no accountant.
• Signals: A Staff posting from Oct 15 advertises five openings (7 days, hot). An Oct 20 update shows activity on the record but not what changed. A design recruiter role posted Oct 19 adds hiring capacity, though it doesn't point to a leadership search.
• Hiring manager: Amy Thibodeau, Chief Design Officer since May 2021. Gusto credits her with pushing designers to build and to own customer experience. Who owns this requisition is unknown.
• Landscape context: We haven't covered payroll and HR AI yet. The JD talks about uncertainty, preserving customer agency and deciding when a human should step in, which amounts to deciding what the system may do on its own: real AI-control work.
• Rubric scores: Company 9/12 (AI 2, Stage 2 on the 2021 price, Design 3, Trajectory 2). Role 12/15 (Comp 2, on a posted $177K–$222K base plus RSUs that straddles the floor; Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 2, Portfolio 3).
• Verdict: Act, at the threshold. Five openings on one requisition says more about growth than any single posting. A new priced round returns Stage to 3. An offer in the lower half of that band drops Comp to 1 and the company to Watch.

5. OpenAI

ChatGPT and the API; the open role sits in Consumer Verticals (role).

• Stage / Capital: OpenAI Group PBC, controlled by the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation. Secured $122B at $852B on Mar 31; confidential draft IPO filing June 8. Employees sold $6.6B at $500B in Oct 2025 and about $7B at $852B in Aug 2026.
• Value chain: Models plus consumer products. Consumer Verticals is the push into regulated categories.
• Best at: Consumer distribution. For most people it is the default AI app.
• Signals: Posted Oct 1. Today is day 21, the last day of the hot window. Watch runs through Nov 12. Scope covers health, finance, trust and safety, and user control.
• Hiring manager: Ian Silber, Head of Product Design for about three years, per an Aug 16 interview on systems thinking and interfaces beyond chat. No verticals-specific design manager identified.
• Landscape context: A general assistant moving into health and finance is a vertical-AI competitive event we haven't covered yet.
• Rubric scores: Company 10/12 (AI 3, Stage 2, was 3; Design 2, Trajectory 3). Role 14/15 (Comp 3, Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 3, Portfolio 3).
• Verdict: Watch for this cycle (Act-eligible through today only). Of the three mega-privates, OpenAI has the best liquidity record, with two employee sales in ten months. A new dated Consumer Verticals or design leadership posting restores Act. Design influence stays at 2 until we can see where verticals design reports.

6. Ramp

Corporate cards, bill pay and spend management, with AI finance agents (Series G).

• Stage / Capital: $1.85B at $60B on Oct 15, led by Dragoneer. Issuer is Ramp Business Corporation. The round lands a day before our window opened but is hot through Oct 29.
• Value chain: Vertically integrated: card issuing plus the software on top.
• Best at: Automation that removes expense work outright.
• Signals: The Oct 15 funding is the only confirmed signal. The Design Systems Lead dates to Sept 30, but its posting page didn't load this pass, so we can't confirm it is live.
• Hiring manager: Diego Zaks, VP Design, start date unclear. His Ramp author page and writing describe design as building trust between finance teams and employees; the commentary on his profile covers handoffs between people and agents.
• Landscape context: With Brex inside Capital One, Ramp is the largest independent in spend management.
• Rubric scores: Company 10/12 (AI 2, Stage 2 on the $60B Series G, no employee tender confirmed; Design 3, Trajectory 3). Role 12/15 provisional, scored on the unverified Design Systems posting (Comp 3, Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 2, Portfolio 2).
• Verdict: Watch, anchored by the funding. We won't put Act on a role score that rests on a page we couldn't load. A confirmed live posting, or any new design posting, before Oct 29 makes this Act.

7. Ironclad (new)

Contract management software whose AI agents act on a company's signed-contract repository (Staff role).

• Stage / Capital: $150M at a reported $3.2B in Jan 2022. No newer price confirmed. Issuer not confirmed.
• Value chain: System of record for executed contracts, with agents writing into those records.
• Best at: A contract library agents can act on, which makes source and approval status the core design problems.
• Signals: Staff Product Designer posted Oct 16 (6 days, hot). Scope lists agent behavior, human control, grounding in sources, attribution, confidence, evaluation and safe failure. Base $210K–$235K plus equity and bonus; San Francisco office at least two days a week.
• Hiring manager: Gap. The posting names no manager, and public sources didn't give us a current design leader or CPO this pass. Treat the reporting line as unknown, not absent.
• Landscape context: Harvey and Legora help draft. Ironclad holds the signed version, and AI-written text sitting in the official repository can be read as approved text. Who marks generated versus reviewed content is a design-authority question.
• Rubric scores: Company 8/12 (AI 2, Stage 2, Design 2 unconfirmed, Trajectory 2 unconfirmed). Role 13/15 (Comp 2, Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 3, Portfolio 3).
• Verdict: Watch. This role passes the AI-ownership test Stripe's doesn't. A named design leader with visible product influence lifts Design to 3 and the company into Act range.

8. Build

AI tooling for building data centers, per its seed coverage; little else about the product is public.

• Stage / Capital: $8.5M seed announced June 30, 2026, led by Index. Build Technologies, Inc.; Tishman Speyer is a partner.
• Value chain: Likely a downstream vertical application (speculative).
• Best at: Unclear from public evidence. The Tishman Speyer partnership is the best sign of real demand.
• Signals: Design Lead posted Sept 14 (38 days, Watch). Leaves the tracker Oct 27.
• Hiring manager: James Stirrat-Ellis, cofounder and CEO, per the role page, which says the Design Lead works directly with him. The formal reporting line is unconfirmed, and no design manager is named.
• Landscape context: Not covered.
• Rubric scores: Company 8/12 (AI 2, Stage 1, Design 3, Trajectory 2). Role 11/15 (Comp 1 estimated, Scope 3, Craft 3, AI 2, Portfolio 2).
• Verdict: Watch until Oct 27. Seed-stage equity drags it down. A repost or a priced Series A brings it back.

9. Talkiatry

In-network online psychiatry covered by insurance (Staff role).

• Stage / Capital: $210M in equity and debt on Feb 12, 2026, split undisclosed. Last filed issuer was Talkiatry Holdings, LLC. An LLC issuer often means units rather than stock options; what new hires receive is unknown.
• Value chain: Vertically integrated care provider covering patient access and clinician tools.
• Best at: Getting patients to covered psychiatry, which is mostly an operations problem.
• Signals: Staff Product Designer posted Oct 12 (10 days, hot).
• Hiring manager: No design leader found. Fallback: Matt Ivester, CPO, who joined in 2024 and says he is focused on patient access and clinician confidence. His CPO start date and the role's reporting line are unconfirmed.
• Landscape context: Healthcare AI is Tier 1 coverage for us. Here AI sits inside a care-delivery company, with Clinical AI named in the role. Not yet covered.
• Rubric scores: Company 7/12 (AI 1, Stage 2 low confidence, Design 2, Trajectory 2). Role 10/15 (Comp 1, posted $150K–$190K; Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 2, Clinical AI in scope; Portfolio 2).
• Verdict: Watch, low priority. It moves up only if the Clinical AI scope turns out to be core product work and the equity instrument is confirmed.

Acquired subsidiary

In this group, the company on the job post and the company issuing your equity are two different companies. Capital One owns Brex outright, and CCC paid for EvolutionIQ partly in CCC stock, so any grant is the parent's stock or cash, and the parent's prospects set its value. One of those parents is about to lock in its share price. Score these roles on the design work, and price the equity as the parent's.

1. EvolutionIQ

AI that tells insurance claims adjusters which files need attention next (Agentic Platform role).

• Stage / Capital: CCC Intelligent Solutions acquired EvolutionIQ on Jan 6, 2025, paying partly in CCC equity (10.36M restricted shares, held-back options, 5.7M RSUs). On Oct 15, CCC (Nasdaq: CCC) agreed to be acquired by GTCR and Elliott for about $6.1B, expected to close Q1 2027. The current posting offers RSUs without naming the issuer; CCC is the likely one (moderate confidence). CCC's employee FAQ says unvested RSUs convert to cash at $7.75 a share at close, on the original vesting schedule. If a new grant gets the same treatment, which is unconfirmed, it becomes a fixed dollar amount before most of it vests.
• Value chain: Downstream application inside a larger insurance software platform.
• Best at: Ranking claims while framing the model's suggestion so the adjuster still makes the call.
• Signals: Posted Oct 5, updated Oct 9 (17 days, hot through Oct 26). Scope covers uncertainty, control, human intervention and error recovery. CCC reports Q3 on Oct 29, with no call.
• Hiring manager: Christy Wedge, Director of Product Design for AI products, start date unconfirmed. Also unconfirmed: her reporting line, whether she owns this role, and whether design sits at EvolutionIQ or CCC. Fallback: Benjamin Berry, CPO.
• Landscape context: This is the second ownership change in two years. Acquired teams already tend to fight the parent over decision rights, and a private-equity owner adds a third layer.
• Rubric scores: Company 7/12 (AI 3, Stage 1, was 2; Design 2, Trajectory 1 on CCC's 9.8% growth and the ownership change). Role 13/15 (Comp 2, Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 3, Portfolio 3).
• Verdict: Watch. The design work is still among the best on this page. The equity now behaves like a deferred cash bonus, so negotiate it that way. We'll re-score when the new owners publish their employee incentive plan.

2. Brex

Corporate cards and spend management, now one product inside a bank.

• Stage / Capital: Capital One closed April 7 for about $2.56B cash plus 10,646,306 Capital One shares. The filing shows $13M of RSU-related consideration. There is no Brex stock left to grant (high confidence). Current Brex postings say equity "may" be offered without saying whose.
• Value chain: Downstream product inside a mature bank, which spent $47M on Brex integration in Q3 while revenue grew 6%.
• Best at: Spend management for startups.
• Signals: Nothing recent. The AI role dates to July 8, 106 days ago.
• Hiring manager: Matt Bango, Chief Design Officer. In Jan 2025 he had design reporting to the CEO. Whether that survived the sale is unknown.
• Landscape context: Capital One is absorbing Discover ($338M of Q3 costs) and Brex at the same time.
• Rubric scores: Company 7/12 (AI 2, Stage 1, Design 2, Trajectory 2). Role not scored.
• Verdict: Ignore-until-trigger. Shown for reference. The 7/12 still clears Watch; Brex is off because its last role is months past the 42-day window. A post-close design leadership posting that names scope, pay and equity issuer brings it back at Watch, not Act. With Stage at 1, even full design influence only gets the company to 8.

Public

Public stock is the only equity on this page you can price any day you like, so its value moves with the company's results as they come in. Figma is the only listing young enough to earn a 2. Samsara, Atlassian and ServiceNow score 1; treat their grants as salary paid in shares whose value tracks growth. Three of the four report earnings before Nov 6, and any of those reports can move a Trajectory score.

1. Figma

Collaborative design software extending into code and AI context (AI & Context role).

• Stage / Capital: NYSE (FIG) since July 31, 2025. Q2 revenue $370.1M, up 48%, with raised guidance. Q3 on Nov 4.
• Value chain: Midstream tooling aiming to become the shared workspace where products get built.
• Best at: Many people editing one live design file.
• Signals: Posted Sept 22 (30 days, Watch). Lists managing managers as ideal.
• Hiring manager: Loredana Crisan, Chief Design Officer since Q3 2025, who judges AI models on output quality and how much busywork they remove. Emily Campbell, Director for AI Models, works adjacent; ownership of this role unconfirmed.
• Landscape context: The role sits on the bet we laid out in our Persona Decoder piece: Figma as the home base for product development.
• Rubric scores: Company 10/12 (AI 2, Stage 2, corrected from 3; Design 3, Trajectory 3). Role 14/15 (Comp 3, Scope 3, Craft 2, AI 3, Portfolio 3).
• Verdict: Watch, decaying. Leaves the tracker Nov 4, earnings day, unless reposted.

2. Samsara

Sensors, cameras and software for fleets and physical operations (Q2 FY27).

• Stage / Capital: NYSE (IOT) since Dec 15, 2021, nearly five years. Q2 revenue $508.4M, up 30%; full-year guidance 26%.
• Value chain: Vertically integrated hardware and software. The value is the data its devices generate.
• Best at: Turning sensor data into workflows frontline workers will actually use.
• Signals: Staff role posted Oct 12 (10 days, hot), focused on craft across products. AI ownership unclear.
• Hiring manager: No design head found. Fallback: Kiren Sekar, CPO, at Samsara since March 2015. Andrew Ackermann left for Mercury; no successor found.
• Landscape context: Field and Industrial AI is Tier 2 for us and not yet covered.
• Rubric scores: Company 8/12 (AI 2, Stage 1 under the early-listing rule, Design 2, Trajectory 3). Role 12/15 (Comp 3, Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 2, Portfolio 2).
• Verdict: Watch. We credit the 30% growth in Trajectory, but it doesn't make a five-year-old listing early. The Design 2 is soft, too: if the role reports into product with no design head, it drops to 1. A named successor to Ackermann with visible product influence lifts Design to 3 and the company to 9, which restores Act while the role is hot. If a search for that successor gets posted, go after it ahead of this role.

3. Atlassian

Jira and Confluence, plus the Rovo AI layer (job 24872).

• Stage / Capital: Nasdaq (TEAM) since 2015. Q4 FY26 revenue $1.766B, up 28%, but FY27 guidance is about 13%. Results Nov 5; some calendars wrongly show Oct 29.
• Value chain: The planning and review layer for software teams.
• Best at: Being the place software work queues for review.
• Signals: Senior Design Manager, Jira AI (on The Muse July 3) is now Senior Director, Jira Design. Under our level-change rule the clock restarts at the earliest record of the new title, a third-party listing from Oct 16. Some candidates may have been in process since July.
• Hiring manager: David Hoang, at Atlassian since at least April 2025. A July event described his remit as Rovo, AI and Jira; the October Team Europe listing, for a session on how Atlassian designs and ships in the AI era, says AI, Ecosystem and DevAI. Ownership of this role unconfirmed.
• Landscape context: If review capacity is what slows AI-heavy teams, Jira is where that backlog shows up.
• Rubric scores: Company 7/12 (AI 2, Stage 1, Design 2, Trajectory 2). Role 12/15 (Comp 3, Scope 3, Craft 2, AI 2, Portfolio 2).
• Verdict: Watch (moderate confidence). A level upgrade usually means the first search taught the committee it needed someone more senior, though that part is inference. If Atlassian's own careers data dates the change before Sept 10, it is already past 42 days and comes off.

4. ServiceNow

Workflow software for large enterprises, with agents acting on the records it holds (AI/ML role).

• Stage / Capital: NYSE (NOW) since 2012. Q2 revenue $3.987B, up 24%. California WARN notices (state-required layoff filings) cover 287 people as of Sept 28 and 20 more on Dec 14. Q3 on Oct 28.
• Value chain: Platform and system of record its own agents act on.
• Best at: Already holding the enterprise work context most agent platforms have to borrow.
• Signals: Sr Staff AI/ML posted Oct 8 (14 days, hot). Product area not named.
• Hiring manager: Dantley Davis, SVP Design, start date not established. His joining statement sets out to bring consumer-grade craft to enterprise software. Ownership of this role unconfirmed.
• Landscape context: Enterprise agents stall on missing context, and ServiceNow generates that context internally.
• Rubric scores: Company 7/12 (AI 2, Stage 1, Design 2, Trajectory 2). Role 12/15 (Comp 3, Scope 2, Craft 3, AI 2, Portfolio 2).
• Verdict: Watch. A guidance cut on Oct 28 drops Trajectory to 1, and then only the role score keeps it on Watch.

Leaving the tracker

Once we recovered the employers' own posting dates, these were easy calls. Harvey's role is ten months old and Parallel's sixteen, much older than the investor-board dates made them look.

• Harvey: Staff role dates to Dec 22, 2025. Returns with a new dated Staff+ posting.
• Abridge: Role from Sept 2, 2025, now titled "Member of Design Staff." Same level, just renamed, so the clock stands. Returns with a new posting.
• Hightouch (June 26), Tribe AI (Jan 29), Parallel (June 13, 2025): past 42 days. Each returns with a new dated posting.
• Suno: No readable posting data on the careers page. Returns once a dated role appears.
• Rubrik (Feb 5), Databricks (June 11): return with a fresh dated design hiring signal.
• Axon/Prepared, Nourish, StackAdapt, Peregrine: Ignore-until-trigger only because we didn't re-verify them this pass. No negative signal. Each returns once a live, dated posting is confirmed.

The wide scan also picked up Oct 19–20 rounds at Town, Daytona and Tenstorrent. None has a confirmed senior design opening, so none enters.