Beyond the Core 35 — Your 100-Company Monitoring Grid

Act This Week — 5 Live Director+ Roles

Prepare outreach for HackerOne, TRM Labs, Smartsheet, Givebutter, and Vanta. All five have verified Director+ postings, strong portfolio match, and Bay Area accessibility.

The scan covered 15 VC portfolio boards, three ATS platforms, and direct career pages across every vertical showing AI-native design leadership signal in the last 90 days. Worth naming up front: the strongest demand is not where conventional wisdom puts it. Consumer AI, chatbots, creative tools are hiring, but the design leadership roles are sparse and the portfolio match is thin. The real density sits in security, compliance, healthcare, financial controls, and physical-world systems. Verticals where supervision, trust, and high-stakes decision-making are the core design problems. Where your published work has structural advantage.

Scoring rubric

Three dimensions, each scored 1–3:

Dimension	3	2	1
Portfolio-to-problem match	Direct pillar match — role maps to agentic AI, enterprise-scale trust, or 0→1 high-stakes build. Lead with a specific case study.	Adjacent match — related domain, requires a bridge argument.	Thin match — significant reframing needed. Eliminated from list.
Hiring signal strength	Live posting with verified ATS link.	Leading indicator: IC cluster, recent funding, executive hire.	Structural fit only, no active signal.
Bay Area accessibility	On-site or hybrid Bay Area.	US-remote.	Non-US or geographic mismatch. Flagged and deprioritized.

Verdicts:

Act — Verified live Director+ or qualifying Staff/Senior Staff IC role, strong portfolio match, Bay Area accessible. Prepare outreach this week.
Watch — Leading indicator with moderate-to-strong match. Monitor weekly, prepare positioning.
Ignore-until-trigger — Structural fit, no active signal. The specific trigger that would upgrade is named.

Clusters are ordered by actionability. Act-heavy clusters first, then Watch density, then monitoring.

1. Agent Supervision & Autonomous Security

Your highest-match cluster. Every company here builds products where AI agents make autonomous decisions and humans verify, correct, and override. Your trust essay and Agentic Labs portfolio are direct proof of concept. Two have live Director+ roles. The other eight are monitoring at companies where the product architecture guarantees a design leadership hire will come. Timing, not probability.

HackerOne. Autonomous pentesting platform where AI agents orchestrate security testing, validation, and expert researcher coordination.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~400 employees; $160M+ raised.
- Offices: San Francisco, Austin, London, Seattle, Washington DC. Remote hubs.
- Value chain: Application layer. HackerOne owns the relationship between enterprises and security researchers. AI agents now handle autonomous testing that previously required human pentesters. The UX is the differentiator: how clearly a security team can see what the agent did, why, and whether to trust the finding.
- Best at: Combining AI agent autonomy with human expert verification in security contexts. The reasoning and context documentation describes exactly the supervision-system design problem your trust essay addresses.
- Signals: Director, AI Product Design posted and live, reports to CPO, SF band $270K–$300K. Role language centers on AI agent experiences, reasoning transparency, and human-AI collaboration.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Lead with Agentic Labs (Carrier IQ agent supervision) + trust essay. TinyFish gives you practitioner credibility on agent traces and auditability. The buyer is the CPO. Act.
TRM Labs. AI platform for blockchain intelligence disrupting criminal networks and countering national security threats through investigative workflows where AI surfaces evidence and humans make prosecution-grade decisions.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; $70M raised February 2026; $1B valuation; ~300 employees.
- Offices: North America remote.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Sits between blockchain data infrastructure and law enforcement/compliance end users. Design influence is high because the investigator experience IS the product.
- Best at: Making blockchain forensics legible to non-technical investigators. A trust-and-explainability design problem at national-security stakes.
- Signals: Head of Product Design posted July 15, 2026. Four days old. This is a build-the-function mandate at a unicorn.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Lead with Alibaba enterprise trust + Agentic Labs. The compliance/investigation workflow maps to your enterprise-scale trust pillar. February funding means budget is allocated. Act.
Abnormal Security. AI-native email security platform using behavioral AI to detect sophisticated social engineering attacks across enterprise communication.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~800 employees; $350M+ raised; valued at ~$5.1B (2024).
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote-eligible.
- Value chain: Application layer. Sits on top of Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, owning the detection-and-response surface where AI decisions need human trust.
- Best at: Behavioral AI that models normal communication patterns to catch anomalies. Making invisible AI decisions visible to security teams.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. No recent product signal; last known milestone: Series D at $5.1B valuation (2024). At 800+ employees, a design leadership hire is structurally overdue.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's agent-correction framework → Abnormal's AI detection transparency for SOC analysts. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ product design role appears, or IC design cluster signals org build-out.
Chainalysis. Blockchain analytics platform providing investigation, compliance, and risk management tools for government agencies and financial institutions.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series F; ~700 employees; $530M+ raised; valued at ~$8.6B.
- Offices: New York HQ, remote-eligible across US.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the intelligence layer between raw blockchain data and compliance/investigation workflows.
- Best at: Making blockchain transaction flows comprehensible to investigators and compliance officers who are not crypto-native.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. No recent product signal; last known milestone: Series F at $8.6B valuation. At this scale the design function exists, but leadership visibility is low.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + multi-stakeholder workflows → Chainalysis investigator/compliance officer decision surfaces. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or IC cluster appears.
Snyk. Developer security platform finding and fixing vulnerabilities in code, dependencies, containers, and infrastructure-as-code.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series G; ~1,000 employees; $1B+ raised; valued at ~$7.4B.
- Offices: Boston HQ, London, Tel Aviv, distributed US.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Integrates into developer workflows (IDE, CI/CD, SCM) to surface security findings where developers already work.
- Best at: Making security findings actionable for developers who are not security experts. A trust-in-AI-recommendations problem.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. No recent product signal; last known milestone: Series G at $7.4B valuation. Large enough that design leadership exists but may not be expanding.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's verification framework → Snyk's AI-generated vulnerability recommendations that developers must trust enough to act on. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or new CPO/VP Product hire.
Wiz. Cloud security platform providing agentless visibility across cloud environments, detecting vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and threats.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Acquired by Google in 2025 for ~$32B. Previously ~1,500 employees.
- Offices: New York, Tel Aviv, distributed. Now part of Google Cloud.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides security posture management across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Now integrated into Google Cloud's security portfolio.
- Best at: Agentless cloud scanning that provides complete visibility without deploying agents.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Design leadership hiring would now route through Google's org structure, not Wiz's independent career page.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Google posts a Director+ design role scoped to the Wiz/cloud security product surface.
SentinelOne. AI-powered endpoint security platform providing autonomous threat detection, response, and remediation across enterprise environments.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NYSE: S); ~2,500 employees; ~$600M+ ARR.
- Offices: Mountain View HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Application layer. The endpoint agent makes autonomous decisions about threats. Design scope includes SOC analyst experiences, threat investigation workflows, and autonomous response transparency.
- Best at: Autonomous threat response where the AI acts first, then explains. The design challenge is post-hoc explainability of autonomous security decisions.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Public company; design leadership hires may surface through executive announcements rather than job boards.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Agentic Labs agent supervision → SentinelOne's autonomous threat response explainability. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: VP/Director Design posting or CDO hire announced.
Vectra AI. AI-powered threat detection and response platform using behavioral analysis to identify cyberattacks across network, cloud, and identity surfaces.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series F; ~600 employees; $350M+ raised; valued at ~$1.2B.
- Offices: San Jose HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Sits in the SOC analyst workflow, surfacing AI-prioritized threats that humans investigate and resolve.
- Best at: AI-driven attack signal prioritization that reduces alert fatigue for SOC analysts. A supervision-burden design problem.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series F at $1.2B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's supervision-burden framework → Vectra's alert-fatigue reduction for SOC analysts. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or IC design cluster.
Armis. IoT and OT security platform providing agentless asset visibility and threat detection across managed and unmanaged connected devices.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~600 employees; $300M+ raised; valued at ~$3.4B.
- Offices: Palo Alto HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Discovers and monitors every connected device (IT, IoT, OT, medical) without agents.
- Best at: Seeing every device on a network, including ones the organization doesn't know about. Making invisible infrastructure visible and actionable.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $3.4B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + complex data surfaces → Armis's device visibility dashboards for security teams managing thousands of unknown endpoints. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role appears.
Orca Security. Cloud security platform providing agentless, full-stack visibility across cloud workloads, configurations, and identities.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; ~500 employees; $632M raised; valued at ~$1.8B.
- Offices: Portland, OR and Tel Aviv. ⚠️ Geographic flag: engineering concentrated in Israel.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Competes with Wiz in cloud security posture management.
- Best at: SideScanning technology that reads cloud workloads without deploying agents or impacting performance.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series C at $1.8B valuation. Competitive pressure from Wiz (now Google) may drive product differentiation through design.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Geographic flag: Tel Aviv engineering base may limit US design leadership scope. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: US-based Director+ design role appears.

2. Workflow Orchestration & Human-Agent Teams

The design problem in this cluster has shifted. It used to be "make collaboration software intuitive." Now it is "design the workspace where humans and AI agents share tasks, handoffs, and accountability." Smartsheet's Director posting says it explicitly: "uniting human teams with AI agents." Front's Head of Product Design role is the same problem in customer communication. Lead with Alibaba for enterprise workflow scale. TinyFish for agent-orchestration currency.

Smartsheet. Enterprise work management platform now integrating AI agents into project orchestration, automation, and insight surfacing.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private (taken private by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners, 2025); ~3,000 employees; ~$1B ARR at time of acquisition.
- Offices: Bellevue, WA HQ; remote USA.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the project and portfolio management surface where teams plan, track, and execute work. AI agents are being added as participants in these workflows, not just automation triggers. Under PE ownership, expect design investment to be more ROI-focused than when public.
- Best at: Enterprise-grade work management with governance controls. The design problem now is making agent-generated work products trustworthy within existing approval workflows.
- Signals: Director, Product Design posted, Greenhouse page updated July 17, 2026. Salary range $235K–$275K. Role language explicitly frames the problem as "uniting human teams with AI agents."
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Enterprise workflow + human-agent orchestration maps directly to Alibaba enterprise trust + agentic AI. Lead with Alibaba for enterprise scale, TinyFish for agent-orchestration currency. Act.
Front. Customer operations platform unifying email, chat, and messaging into shared team inboxes with AI-powered triage and response.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~300 employees; $204M raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the customer communication surface where teams collaborate on responses. AI is being integrated for triage, drafting, and routing.
- Best at: Shared inbox collaboration that doesn't feel like a ticketing system. Adding AI assistance without breaking the conversational flow.
- Signals: Head of Product Design posted May 15, 2026 in San Francisco. At 65 days, beyond the 42-day freshness threshold. But Head of Product Design at a ~300-person Series D in SF is a thin candidate pool: the role requires someone who can bridge customer ops workflow design and AI-native triage, and SF-only narrows the field further. Senior design leadership searches at this seniority and specificity routinely take 60–90 days. Still, verify before investing outreach time.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Enterprise communication workflow maps to Alibaba trust design. Staleness risk is real but justified by role specificity. Watch. Verify posting status before preparing materials. If confirmed active, upgrade to Act immediately.
Asana. Work management platform for team coordination, project tracking, and goal alignment, now integrating AI for task prioritization and workflow automation.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NYSE: ASAN); ~1,800 employees.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the task and project surface. AI integration focuses on work intelligence: predicting bottlenecks, suggesting task assignments, automating status updates.
- Best at: Clean, opinionated task management UX that scales from small teams to enterprise. Design has historically had a strong seat at the table.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Asana has a mature design org; leadership hires would likely be backfills or expansion into AI-specific surfaces.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba multi-surface enterprise platform → Asana's AI work-intelligence surfaces. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: VP/Director Design departure or AI-specific design leadership role.
Monday.com. Work operating system providing customizable workflows, dashboards, and automations for teams across industries.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NASDAQ: MNDY); ~2,000 employees; Tel Aviv HQ.
- Offices: Tel Aviv HQ, New York, Miami, distributed. ⚠️ Core engineering in Israel, but US product/design presence exists.
- Value chain: Application layer. Highly customizable platform that serves as the operational surface for diverse team workflows.
- Best at: Flexibility. The platform adapts to almost any workflow shape, which is both its strength and its design challenge.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting for US-based roles.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise platform coherence → Monday.com's challenge of maintaining UX coherence across infinitely customizable workflows. Verify US design leadership scope. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: US-based Director+ design role.
Notion. All-in-one workspace for docs, wikis, databases, and project management, with AI assistant integrated across surfaces.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; ~$10B valuation.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, New York.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the knowledge and project surface. Notion AI is deeply integrated. Design influence is high: the product IS the experience.
- Best at: Making powerful database-backed documents feel simple. The AI integration challenge is maintaining that simplicity while adding agent capabilities.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Notion's design org is mature and well-regarded.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + Agentic Labs AI integration → Notion's challenge of adding AI agent capabilities without breaking the simplicity that defines the product. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or AI-specific design leadership posting.
Lattice. People management platform for performance reviews, engagement surveys, compensation, and career development.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; ~$3B valuation; $328M raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the HR workflow surface for managers and employees. AI is being integrated for performance insights and compensation recommendations.
- Best at: Making HR processes feel human rather than bureaucratic. AI-powered recommendations in high-stakes people decisions.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $3B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + Thermo Fisher high-stakes decision surfaces → Lattice's AI-powered compensation and performance recommendations where errors have career consequences. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or VP Design departure.
Rippling. Unified HR, IT, and finance platform managing employees from hire to retire across payroll, benefits, devices, and apps.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~3,000 employees; ~$13.5B valuation; $1.4B+ raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Vertically integrated. Owns the full employee lifecycle surface, from HR to IT to finance. This breadth creates complex design challenges across multiple product surfaces.
- Best at: Unifying disparate HR/IT/finance workflows into a single platform. The design problem is coherence across radically different functional domains.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $13.5B valuation. At 3,000 employees, the design org is substantial.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba multi-surface platform unification ($50B+ GMV across homepage, search, PDP) → Rippling's coherence challenge across HR, IT, and finance surfaces. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or AI design team formation signal.
Airtable. Low-code platform combining spreadsheet flexibility with database power for building custom apps and workflows.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~900 employees; ~$11B valuation (2021, likely adjusted); $1.4B raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the building blocks for custom workflows. AI is being integrated for data analysis, automation generation, and interface creation.
- Best at: Making database-powered applications accessible to non-technical users.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Airtable has undergone restructuring; valuation likely adjusted since 2021.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise platform complexity → Airtable's challenge of making AI-generated automations trustworthy in custom workflow contexts. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or new CPO hire.
Coda. Document-based platform combining docs, spreadsheets, and applications into a single surface with AI-powered automation.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~400 employees; ~$1.4B valuation; $400M+ raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Competes with Notion and Airtable in the flexible workspace category.
- Best at: Packs, integrations that bring external data into docs. Making AI-powered document workflows feel natural.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $1.4B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Agentic Labs AI workflow design → Coda's AI-powered document automation. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
ClickUp. Project management and productivity platform providing tasks, docs, goals, and AI-powered workflow automation.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~1,000 employees; ~$4B valuation; $535M raised.
- Offices: San Diego HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Competes broadly across project management, docs, and collaboration.
- Best at: Feature density. ClickUp tries to replace multiple tools. The design challenge is managing complexity while adding AI capabilities.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $4B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba multi-surface platform coherence → ClickUp's complexity management across a sprawling feature surface. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or VP Design hire.

3. High-Stakes Verticals — Climate, Civic & Mission-Driven

Three thin verticals grouped by a structural trait: the mission is the product, and design credibility comes from proving you can build for organizations where failure has real-world consequences. Scientific tooling and autonomous physical systems couldn't fill standalone clusters of 10 (the confirmed US-eligible design leadership postings are too sparse), so the strongest candidates from those domains land here alongside climate, civic, and nonprofit. Your Red Cross case ($847K disbursed, 6 systems→1, national deployment) is the lead story. Givebutter has a live Director role. Kettle and Instrumentl are Watch-tier. The rest are monitoring, but the pattern holds: mission-driven organizations are adopting AI and need design leaders who understand high-stakes build.

Givebutter. Fundraising platform serving 84,000 nonprofits with donation pages, events, CRM, and AI-powered fundraising tools that have helped raise over $10B.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series B; ~150 employees; $58M raised.
- Offices: Remote, hub-based.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the fundraising and donor management surface for nonprofits. Design influence is high: the donor experience directly drives conversion and the nonprofit admin experience determines retention.
- Best at: Making fundraising tools feel modern and accessible to small nonprofits that can't afford enterprise solutions.
- Signals: Director, Product Design published June 15, 2026. At 34 days, within the action window. This is a build-the-function mandate.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Your Red Cross case is directly relevant: nonprofit operations, national scale, systems consolidation. Lead with Red Cross + Thermo Fisher for high-stakes build credibility. Act.
Instrumentl. Grant discovery and management platform serving 5,500+ nonprofit and research organizations, with $1B+ moved through the platform.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series B; ~100 employees; $80M+ raised.
- Offices: Remote US and Canada.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the grant lifecycle from discovery through tracking and reporting. The "GrantOS" framing suggests platform ambitions beyond search.
- Best at: Making the grant discovery and application process systematic rather than ad hoc.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer, GrantOS posted June 8, 2026. Staff IC, not Director+. But the "GrantOS" framing and platform ambition suggest design leadership expansion is coming.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Red Cross systems consolidation (6→1) + Thermo Fisher regulated platform → Instrumentl's GrantOS platform build for mission-driven organizations. Watch. Monitor for Director+ posting. The Staff role signals design investment.
GoodParty.org. AI-powered platform for independent political candidates, claiming 13,000+ independent candidates have won races using its tools.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Nonprofit/venture-backed hybrid; ~30 employees; early stage.
- Offices: Remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Provides campaign tools (AI campaign manager, voter outreach, fundraising) for independent candidates.
- Best at: Applying AI to political campaign operations for candidates without party infrastructure.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer published July 14, 2026. Fresh. Staff IC at a 30-person org is effectively a design leadership role.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Red Cross national-scale civic deployment + Agentic Labs AI agent design → GoodParty's AI campaign manager for independent candidates. Strong mission alignment if you want a high-impact, small-team role. Watch.
Kettle. AI-powered insurance and reinsurance platform for property owners affected by climate events, operating as a Lloyd's-listed MGA.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series B; ~50 employees; Bermuda HQ with US market coverage.
- Offices: Remote, Bermuda-registered. US team presence.
- Value chain: Application layer. Uses AI to price climate risk more accurately than traditional actuarial models, then underwrites policies.
- Best at: AI-driven climate risk pricing that makes previously uninsurable properties insurable.
- Signals: Director, Product Design is live on Greenhouse. Posting date could not be confirmed from Greenhouse metadata. Small team means this is a build-the-function mandate.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher regulated 0→1 build + Carrier IQ insurance automation → Kettle's AI-driven climate risk pricing. The Director title at a 50-person company means you'd own everything. Watch. Lead with Thermo Fisher for regulated 0→1 credibility if you pursue.
Aurora Solar. Solar design and sales platform used by solar installers to model, design, and sell residential and commercial solar systems.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~400 employees; $300M+ raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ.
- Value chain: Vertically integrated. Owns the solar project lifecycle from site assessment through design, permitting, and sales. AI powers the 3D modeling and energy production estimation.
- Best at: AI-powered solar design that turns satellite imagery into accurate energy production models. Making complex engineering outputs trustworthy for non-technical salespeople and homeowners.
- Signals: Head of Design posted April 28, 2026. At 82 days, well beyond the 42-day freshness threshold and approaching the 90-day default-to-Ignore. Head of Design in vertical SaaS for solar engineering is a genuinely thin candidate pool. The intersection of design leadership, energy tech domain knowledge, and AI-powered modeling tools is narrow enough that extended fill cycles are common. But at 82 days, the probability of this being filled or paused is high.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Vertical SaaS + trust design + 0→1 build maps to Thermo Fisher. But staleness makes this an Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: posting refreshed, confirmed active, or reposted with updated language. If confirmed active, upgrade to Act immediately. The portfolio match is strong.
Lila Sciences. AI platform for scientific discovery, applying machine learning to accelerate research across chemistry, biology, and materials science.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series A (General Catalyst); ~50 employees.
- Offices: Cambridge, MA. ⚠️ No Bay Area presence confirmed.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides AI-powered research tools for scientists.
- Best at: Applying AI to scientific discovery workflows where trust in AI-generated hypotheses is critical.
- Signals: Head of Design discovered via General Catalyst portfolio board; no primary ATS link could be confirmed. Posted January 21, 2026. At 179 days, extremely stale. Cambridge location is a geographic mismatch.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher scientific/regulated platform + trust essay → Lila Sciences' AI-generated hypothesis trust for researchers. Stale posting + Cambridge location + no confirmed primary ATS = triple downgrade. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: refreshed posting on primary ATS with remote/Bay Area eligibility.
PermitFlow. AI-powered construction permitting platform automating the permit application and approval process for construction projects.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series B; ~100 employees; $55M+ raised.
- Offices: New York HQ, hybrid. ⚠️ NYC-preferred.
- Value chain: Application layer. Sits between construction companies and municipal permitting offices, automating a workflow that is traditionally manual and opaque.
- Best at: Turning a notoriously slow, paper-based government process into an AI-automated workflow.
- Signals: Head of Design published May 11, 2026. At 69 days, stale. NYC location is a geographic downgrade.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Red Cross systems consolidation (paper-to-digital, government-adjacent) + Thermo Fisher regulated platform → PermitFlow's government permitting automation. Stale + NYC = double downgrade. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: refreshed posting with remote eligibility.
Watershed. Climate platform helping companies measure, reduce, and report their carbon emissions, with AI-powered data collection and analysis.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; ~400 employees; $350M+ raised; valued at ~$1.8B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the corporate climate reporting surface. Design scope includes emissions dashboards, reduction planning tools, and regulatory compliance reporting.
- Best at: Making corporate carbon accounting accurate and auditable. Trust in AI-generated emissions data where regulatory consequences are real.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. SEC climate disclosure rules and EU CSRD are driving demand for Watershed's product, but no design leadership movement detected.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + Thermo Fisher regulated compliance → Watershed's corporate emissions reporting where data accuracy has regulatory consequences. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role appears.
Khan Academy. Nonprofit education platform providing free courses, now with AI tutor (Khanmigo) powered by GPT-4 for personalized learning.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Nonprofit; ~300 employees; grant-funded.
- Offices: Mountain View, CA HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the student learning surface. Khanmigo is an AI tutor that needs to be trustworthy, pedagogically sound, and accessible to students of all ages.
- Best at: Making education accessible at scale. The supervision question here is specific: how do teachers and parents verify what the AI is teaching?
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Khanmigo expansion suggests design investment, but nonprofit compensation may be below market.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's supervision framework (Watch→Verify→Delegate) → Khanmigo's teacher/parent oversight of AI tutoring. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role with competitive compensation.
Nava PBC. Public benefit corporation building digital services for government agencies, including Healthcare.gov and VA.gov.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public benefit corporation; ~200 employees; government contracts.
- Offices: Washington DC, distributed US.
- Value chain: Services layer. Builds and operates government digital services. Design influence is high: the user experience of government services directly affects millions of people.
- Best at: Making government services work for the people who need them most. High-stakes, high-scale, high-consequence.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Nava's government contract work (Healthcare.gov, VA.gov) is ongoing but design leadership openings surface infrequently.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Red Cross (national deployment, systems consolidation, $847K disbursed) + Thermo Fisher (regulated, high-stakes, 100% adoption) map directly. Government contracting has different compensation and pace dynamics. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role appears. Worth proactive outreach. The portfolio match is unusually strong.

4. Developer Platforms & AI Infrastructure

Five verified Watch entries in one cluster. Unusual density. Developer platforms are hiring designers because AI is reshaping how software gets built, and the work is making complex technical systems legible to developers who are now collaborating with AI agents. Your portfolio match here is moderate. You'd need to bridge from enterprise trust to developer experience. But the signal density is worth monitoring because these companies are actively investing in design right now. Render's IC cluster (Staff and Senior posted on the same date at a 200-person company without a named design leader) is the kind of precursor signal that precedes a leadership hire by 4–8 weeks.

GitLab. DevSecOps platform used by 50M+ registered users and more than half the Fortune 100 for source code management, CI/CD, and security scanning.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NASDAQ: GTLB); ~2,000 employees.
- Offices: Remote-first (US, Canada, UK).
- Value chain: Platform layer. Owns the developer workflow from code to production. AI is being integrated across code suggestion, security scanning, and knowledge management.
- Best at: Single-platform DevSecOps that eliminates tool sprawl. Coherence across a massive feature surface.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer, Knowledge Graph updated July 14, 2026. The Knowledge Graph focus suggests AI-powered developer knowledge surfaces.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba multi-surface platform coherence → GitLab's challenge of maintaining UX coherence across a sprawling DevSecOps feature surface. If the role is about making AI-generated knowledge trustworthy, lead with your trust essay. Watch.
Grafana Labs. Observability platform with 35M users and 7,000+ customers, providing dashboards, alerting, and incident response management for cloud infrastructure.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~1,000 employees; $240M+ raised; valued at ~$6B.
- Offices: Remote-first globally, US distributed.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the observability surface where engineering teams monitor, alert, and respond to infrastructure issues.
- Best at: Open-source-first observability that integrates with everything. Making complex telemetry data actionable under pressure.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer, Incident Response Management updated July 16, 2026. Incident response is a high-stakes, time-critical design problem. The closest to your trust and supervision work in this cluster.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's supervision framework → incident response as a trust-and-recovery workflow where the operator must verify AI-generated alerts before acting. Watch.
Render. Cloud platform for deploying AI apps and agents, recently valued at $1.5B after a $100M Series C extension in February 2026.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; ~200 employees; $180M+ raised; $1.5B valuation.
- Offices: Remote US.
- Value chain: Infrastructure layer. Provides the cloud runtime for deploying applications. Design influence is moderate: the developer dashboard and deployment experience matter, but infrastructure decisions are engineering-driven.
- Best at: Simplifying cloud deployment for developers who don't want to manage infrastructure.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer and Senior Product Designer both published July 13, 2026. IC cluster at a 200-person company without a named design leader = design org build-out signal. February 2026 funding ($100M) provides the budget.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba platform coherence → Render's developer dashboard and deployment UX. Infrastructure layer limits design influence, but the IC cluster suggests a leadership hire could follow. Watch. Monitor for Director+ posting in the next 4–8 weeks.
Docker. Container platform for building, sharing, and running applications, now repositioning as AI agents reshape software development workflows.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; profitable.
- Offices: Remote US and Canada.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the containerization layer developers use to package and deploy applications. AI is changing how containers are built, configured, and orchestrated.
- Best at: Developer workflow integration. Docker is embedded in millions of developers' daily routines.
- Signals: Principal Product Designer, Container Platform is live. Principal IC at Docker is a senior role with broad product influence.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: TinyFish enterprise agent platform experience → Docker's challenge of designing container workflows as AI agents become first-class participants in software development. Watch.
Deepgram. Voice AI platform providing speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice agent APIs for developers building conversational AI applications.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series B; ~150 employees; $86M raised.
- Offices: San Francisco, remote PST.
- Value chain: Infrastructure layer. Provides the voice AI APIs that other companies build on. Design influence is limited to developer experience and documentation surfaces.
- Best at: Low-latency, high-accuracy speech recognition optimized for real-time conversational AI.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer is live in SF/PST.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Agentic Labs voice-adjacent AI agent design → Deepgram's developer experience for voice AI integration. Narrow design surface. Watch. Lower priority than other Watch entries in this cluster.
Vercel. Frontend cloud platform and creator of Next.js, providing deployment, edge functions, and AI SDK for building web applications.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~500 employees; $313M raised; valued at ~$3.5B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Owns the frontend deployment surface. The AI SDK (Vercel AI) is becoming a key tool for building AI-powered web applications.
- Best at: Making frontend deployment instant and global. v0 (AI-powered UI generation) is a major product surface.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. v0 AI-powered UI generation launched in 2024 and continues to evolve.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Agentic Labs AI product design → Vercel's v0 AI-generated UI supervision and quality control. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or AI product design leadership posting.
Supabase. Open-source Firebase alternative providing database, authentication, storage, and edge functions for developers.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; ~200 employees; $116M raised; valued at ~$500M+.
- Offices: Remote-first, distributed globally. SF presence.
- Value chain: Infrastructure layer. Provides backend-as-a-service.
- Best at: Open-source developer infrastructure with a clean, opinionated dashboard experience.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series C.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba platform coherence → Supabase's developer dashboard and data management UX. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Postman. API platform for building, testing, and documenting APIs, used by 30M+ developers and 500,000+ organizations.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~800 employees; $433M raised; valued at ~$5.6B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, distributed.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Owns the API development workflow.
- Best at: Making API development collaborative and accessible. Evolving from individual developer tool to team platform.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $5.6B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise platform scale → Postman's evolution from developer tool to enterprise collaboration platform. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or VP Design departure.
LaunchDarkly. Feature management platform enabling teams to control feature releases, run experiments, and manage feature flags at scale.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~500 employees; $330M raised; valued at ~$3B.
- Offices: Oakland HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Sits in the deployment pipeline, controlling which features are visible to which users.
- Best at: Making feature releases safe and measurable.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $3B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba multi-surface platform coherence → LaunchDarkly's feature management complexity across enterprise deployment pipelines. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Netlify. Web development platform providing build, deploy, and serverless functions for modern web applications.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~300 employees; $212M raised; valued at ~$2B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Competes with Vercel in the frontend deployment space.
- Best at: Simplifying web deployment with a Git-based workflow.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $2B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba platform coherence → Netlify's developer deployment experience. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.

5. Fintech & Agentic Finance

Airwallex literally called their new team "T0 Agentic Finance." That tells you where the category is going. Across this cluster, the design problem is consistent: AI agents that move money, manage spend, verify identity, or assess risk, and the humans who need to trust, supervise, and correct them. Your Alibaba enterprise trust + Agentic Labs agent supervision + TinyFish production AI credibility is the positioning trifecta. Four Watch entries with verified roles. Zip's IC cluster (Senior/Staff + Principal PM, AI, posted within 10 days of each other) is the strongest leading indicator of a Director+ hire in the next 4–8 weeks.

Airwallex. Global payments and financial platform for businesses, now building an AI-native autonomous financial software team called T0 Agentic Finance.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series E; ~1,500 employees; $900M+ raised; valued at ~$5.6B.
- Offices: San Francisco (hybrid), Melbourne HQ, global.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the financial infrastructure (payments, treasury, spend management) that businesses build on. The T0 Agentic Finance team is building autonomous financial agents on top of this infrastructure.
- Best at: Multi-currency, cross-border financial operations at scale. For T0: how do you let AI agents execute financial transactions autonomously while maintaining human oversight?
- Signals: Staff Product Designer, T0 Agentic Finance published June 24, 2026 in San Francisco. Founding designer role for a new AI-native team within an established fintech.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Agentic finance supervision maps directly to your agentic AI pillar + Alibaba financial platform trust. Lead with Agentic Labs + TinyFish agent credibility. Watch. Staff IC, not Director+, but the founding-team framing means this could evolve into a leadership role. Monitor for Director+ posting.
Zip. Procurement and spend management platform automating intake-to-pay workflows for enterprise companies.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~500 employees; $370M+ raised; valued at ~$2.2B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the procurement workflow surface from request through approval, purchase, and payment.
- Best at: Making enterprise procurement fast without sacrificing compliance controls. AI-powered spend decisions that need human approval.
- Signals: Senior/Staff Product Designer and Senior Product Designer, Global Payments posted July 6–15, 2026. IC cluster plus a Principal Product Manager, AI role. Design org expansion signal without a named design leader = leadership hire likely in 4–8 weeks.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Enterprise procurement trust + AI automation maps to Alibaba + agentic AI. The IC cluster is the strongest leading indicator in this cluster. Watch. Monitor weekly for Director+ posting.
Engine. Corporate travel and spend platform serving 30,000+ companies, 1M travelers, and billions in annual bookings.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~300 employees; $150M+ raised.
- Offices: Remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the corporate travel booking and expense surface.
- Best at: Making corporate travel booking as easy as consumer travel while maintaining corporate policy compliance.
- Signals: Principal Product Designer, FinTech and Staff Product Designer, Flights updated July 14–15, 2026. Two senior IC roles across different product surfaces = design investment signal.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + Allē dual-surface redesign → Engine's multi-surface corporate travel and spend compliance. Watch. Dual-surface hiring suggests design org expansion.
Affinity. Relationship intelligence platform for dealmakers (PE, VC, investment banks) using AI to surface insights from communication and interaction data.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; ~300 employees; $120M+ raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, New York, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the relationship management surface for financial dealmakers. AI generates insights from non-deterministic data (emails, meetings, interactions).
- Best at: Turning unstructured relationship data into actionable deal intelligence. Why does the AI think this relationship matters? That explainability question is the design problem.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer published July 13, 2026. Role language emphasizes AI-augmented workflows, explainability, and trust in non-deterministic data.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's explainability framework + Alibaba enterprise data trust → Affinity's AI-generated relationship intelligence for dealmakers. Watch.
Mercury. Banking platform for startups providing business banking, treasury, credit cards, and venture debt with AI-powered financial insights.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~800 employees; $163M raised; valued at ~$1.6B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, Portland, New York, remote.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the banking surface for startups and SMBs. Design influence is high: the banking experience IS the product.
- Best at: Making business banking feel like a consumer product. Clean, opinionated design is Mercury's core differentiator.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Mercury has a strong design reputation; leadership hires would be strategic.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + Allē consumer platform scale → Mercury's fintech trust design. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or VP Design departure.
Plaid. Financial data infrastructure connecting consumer bank accounts to fintech applications through APIs.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~1,200 employees; $734M raised; valued at ~$13B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Infrastructure layer. Provides the financial data plumbing that other fintech apps build on.
- Best at: Making bank account connections seamless and trustworthy. The consent flow, where users authorize data sharing, is a trust design problem.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $13B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's trust ladder (Watch→Verify→Delegate) → Plaid's consent and authorization UX where users must trust data-sharing decisions. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Marqeta. Modern card issuing platform enabling companies to create, manage, and control payment cards with real-time authorization and AI-powered fraud detection.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NASDAQ: MQ); ~700 employees.
- Offices: Oakland HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Infrastructure layer. Provides the card issuing and processing infrastructure.
- Best at: Real-time card controls and just-in-time funding.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise platform trust → Marqeta's real-time card authorization and fraud detection dashboards. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Carta. Equity management platform for private companies providing cap table management, valuations, fund administration, and liquidity.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~1,500 employees; $1.1B raised; valued at ~$7.4B (2021, likely adjusted).
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the equity management surface for startups, investors, and employees.
- Best at: Making cap table management and 409A valuations accessible. Equity decisions are high-stakes and irreversible.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Carta has undergone restructuring; valuation likely adjusted since 2021.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher high-stakes decision surfaces + Alibaba enterprise trust → Carta's equity management where errors have irreversible financial consequences. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or new CPO hire.
Navan. Corporate travel and expense management platform combining booking, expense reporting, and corporate card management with AI-powered policy enforcement.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~3,000 employees; $1.6B raised; valued at ~$9.2B.
- Offices: Palo Alto HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the corporate travel and expense surface.
- Best at: Combining travel booking and expense management into a single platform with AI-powered policy compliance.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $9.2B valuation. At 3,000 employees, the design org is substantial.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise platform + Allē dual-surface redesign → Navan's multi-surface travel and expense compliance. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Melio. B2B payments platform enabling small businesses to pay vendors and get paid through ACH, check, or card, with AI-powered cash flow management.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~600 employees; $506M raised; valued at ~$2B.
- Offices: New York HQ, Denver, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the SMB accounts payable/receivable surface.
- Best at: Making B2B payments as simple as consumer payments for small businesses.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $2B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba B2B platform trust → Melio's SMB payment trust and cash flow management. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.

6. Healthcare & Clinical AI

Regulated care is where your 0→1 high-stakes build pillar meets AI. Every company here faces the same constraint: AI that touches patients, clinicians, or clinical decisions needs trust mechanisms that go beyond "the model is accurate." Your Thermo Fisher case (pharma, 100% adoption, $20M+ margin) and Red Cross case (national deployment, high-stakes) are the lead stories. Three Watch entries with verified roles. The rest are monitoring at healthcare companies where AI integration is creating new design leadership demand.

Nourish. AI-native digital health platform matching patients with registered dietitians, physicians, medications, lab testing, and AI agents, backed by a $100M Series C in 2026.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; ~300 employees; $100M+ raised in 2026.
- Offices: New York, San Francisco.
- Value chain: Vertically integrated. Owns the patient journey from matching through treatment, combining AI agents with human clinicians. Design influence is high: the patient and clinician experiences are the product.
- Best at: AI-native care coordination that integrates multiple treatment modalities (nutrition, medication, lab testing) into a single patient experience.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer updated June 30, 2026 in New York/San Francisco. Staff IC at a healthcare company with recent $100M funding = design investment signal.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Regulated health + AI agents + 0→1 build maps to Thermo Fisher + agentic AI pillar. Lead with Thermo Fisher for regulated credibility, TinyFish for AI-native build currency. Watch. Monitor for Director+ posting.
WW (WeightWatchers). Consumer health platform now integrating clinical pathways, GLP-1 medication management, and AI-powered behavior change into its weight management program.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NASDAQ: WW); ~3,000 employees.
- Offices: New York HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the consumer health behavior-change surface. AI is being integrated for personalized coaching, clinical pathway recommendations, and medication management.
- Best at: Behavior change at scale. The design challenge is integrating clinical AI (GLP-1 workflows, lab results) into a consumer experience without losing the motivational core.
- Signals: Principal Product Designer is live, US remote. Role language references regulated healthcare, 0→1 initiatives, and clinical pathways.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Allē consumer health/wellness platform (30M members, dual-surface redesign) → WW's clinical AI integration into consumer behavior-change experience. Watch. Lead with Allē for consumer health scale if you pursue.
Zocdoc. Healthcare marketplace connecting patients with doctors across all 50 states, 200+ specialties, and 12,000+ insurance plans.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~600 employees; $375M+ raised.
- Offices: New York HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the patient-provider matching surface.
- Best at: Making healthcare appointment booking as easy as restaurant reservations.
- Signals: Director, Product Design and Principal Product Designer are on Greenhouse, but both are older than the 42-day freshness threshold. Staleness risk is high.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba marketplace trust + Allē consumer health → Zocdoc's patient-provider matching. Stale postings + NYC location = double downgrade. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: refreshed Director+ posting with remote eligibility.
Maven Clinic. Virtual care platform for women's and family health, providing telehealth, care navigation, and employer-sponsored benefits.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; $300M+ raised; valued at ~$1.7B.
- Offices: New York HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Sits between employees and the healthcare system, providing navigation, virtual care, and expert opinions.
- Best at: Specialized virtual care for underserved health categories (fertility, maternity, menopause). Making sensitive health conversations feel safe in a digital environment.
- Signals: VP of Design published June 16, 2026 in New York. Base salary range $250K–$350K. Reports to CPO. Leads ~15-person team across product design, brand design, and user research. Role language names AI-native product experiences, conversational interfaces, agent-driven workflows, and adaptive onboarding. At 33 days, within the extended action window but approaching the verification threshold. Note: General Catalyst board lists this as "Head of Design." Use the direct ATS title (VP of Design) in outreach.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher regulated health platform + Allē consumer health → Maven's sensitive virtual care experience. Watch. Verify search status before deep tailoring. If confirmed active, lead with Thermo Fisher for regulated credibility and Allē for consumer health scale.
Hims & Hers. Telehealth and wellness platform providing online consultations, prescriptions, and personalized treatment plans for hair, skin, sexual health, and mental health.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NYSE: HIMS); ~1,500 employees; ~$1.5B+ revenue.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Vertically integrated. Owns the patient journey from consultation through prescription and fulfillment.
- Best at: Making telehealth feel like a consumer brand, not a clinical experience.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Public company with strong consumer brand.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Allē consumer health/wellness (30M members, 3.2× redemption) → Hims & Hers consumer telehealth. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Ro. Digital health platform providing telehealth, diagnostics, and pharmacy services across weight management, men's health, and women's health.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~600 employees; $876M raised; valued at ~$7B.
- Offices: New York HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Vertically integrated. Owns the patient journey from diagnosis through treatment and medication delivery.
- Best at: Full-stack digital health that controls the pharmacy and diagnostics layers, not just the telehealth surface.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $7B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher vertically integrated health platform → Ro's full-stack digital health from diagnosis through fulfillment. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Included Health. Virtual care and navigation platform combining telehealth, expert medical opinions, and care navigation for employer-sponsored health benefits.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~3,000 employees; formed from merger of Grand Rounds and Doctor on Demand.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Sits between employees and the healthcare system, providing navigation, virtual care, and expert opinions.
- Best at: Care navigation that helps patients find the right doctor and treatment.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Formed from Grand Rounds + Doctor on Demand merger.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Red Cross systems consolidation (6→1) → Included Health's post-merger platform unification. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Commure. Healthcare AI and interoperability platform (merged with Athelas) providing clinical AI, ambient documentation, and device integration for health systems.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; valued at ~$5B.
- Offices: Mountain View HQ.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the AI and interoperability infrastructure that health systems build on.
- Best at: Clinical AI that integrates with existing health system infrastructure rather than replacing it.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Athelas merger and $5B valuation suggest rapid growth.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher pharma platform (6 partners, 100% adoption) → Commure's clinical AI integration across health systems. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Color Health. Population health and genomics platform providing COVID testing, cancer screening, and employer health programs powered by AI-driven risk assessment.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~400 employees; $278M raised; valued at ~$4.6B (2021).
- Offices: Burlingame, CA (Bay Area).
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the population health screening and risk assessment surface.
- Best at: Making population-scale health screening accessible and actionable. Communicating AI-generated health risk to non-clinical users.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Valuation may have adjusted since 2021.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's trust ladder → Color's AI-generated health risk communication where patients must understand and trust AI-driven screening results. Bay Area location is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Tempus. Precision medicine AI platform providing genomic sequencing, clinical data analysis, and AI-powered treatment recommendations for oncology and other specialties.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NASDAQ: TEM); ~2,500 employees.
- Offices: Chicago HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the AI and data infrastructure for precision medicine.
- Best at: Making genomic and clinical data actionable for oncologists making treatment decisions. Trust in AI-generated treatment recommendations at life-or-death stakes.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. IPO on NASDAQ as TEM; precision medicine AI at life-or-death stakes.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Thermo Fisher pharma platform ($20M+ margin, 100% adoption) + trust essay (agent verification in high-stakes contexts) map directly to Tempus's oncology AI. Chicago HQ is a geographic consideration. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role with remote/Bay Area eligibility. Worth proactive outreach. The portfolio match is unusually strong.

7. Vertical SaaS & Industry AI

AI is transforming industry-specific workflows, and the design leader who gets hired proves they understand both the technology and the domain. Your 0→1 build portfolio (Thermo Fisher in pharma, Allē in aesthetics, Equinox+ in fitness) proves exactly that. Babylist is the strongest signal here: a Director role plus Staff and Senior AI Builder roles posted simultaneously means they're building an AI design team from scratch. A mandate, not a backfill.

Babylist. Baby registry and commerce platform serving 10M+ annual shoppers with $750M in 2025 revenue, now building an AI Builder team.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~300 employees; $750M revenue (2025).
- Offices: Remote US and Canada.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the baby registry and commerce surface. The AI Builder team is creating AI-powered shopping, recommendation, and content experiences.
- Best at: Dominating the baby registry category with a clean, comprehensive commerce experience.
- Signals: Director, Product Design, AI Builder, Staff Product Designer, AI Builder, and Senior Product Designer, AI Builder all posted simultaneously. Full AI design team build. The Director role is the leadership mandate.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Allē consumer platform (30M members, 3.2× redemption) + Equinox+ 0→1 speed → Babylist's AI Builder team mandate. The domain (baby products) requires a bridge, but the team-build mandate maps to your function-building experience. Watch. Lead with Allē for consumer platform scale and Equinox+ for 0→1 speed.
GlossGenius. AI-powered operating system for beauty and wellness businesses, serving 100,000+ service businesses with scheduling, payments, marketing, and client management.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series E; ~300 employees; $200M+ raised.
- Offices: San Francisco, New York. ⚠️ Role mentions SF but also references NYC commutability. Verify location requirements.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the full business operations surface for beauty and wellness professionals.
- Best at: Making business management tools beautiful and intuitive for solo practitioners and small teams in beauty/wellness.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer updated July 18, 2026 in San Francisco. Staff IC, not Director+.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Allē beauty/aesthetics (30M members, dual-surface) → GlossGenius beauty/wellness SaaS. The domain overlap is strong. Watch. Lead with Allē if you pursue.
ServiceTitan. Cloud platform for home and commercial service businesses (HVAC, plumbing, electrical) providing scheduling, dispatch, invoicing, and AI-powered operations.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NASDAQ: TTAN, IPO December 2024); ~2,000 employees.
- Offices: Glendale, CA HQ.
- Value chain: Vertically integrated. Owns the full service business workflow from lead to invoice.
- Best at: Digitizing an industry that was largely paper-based. Making complex business software usable by field technicians on mobile.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. IPO December 2024; design investment may be increasing post-IPO.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher field-deployed enterprise software (6 pharma partners, mobile adoption) → ServiceTitan's field technician mobile experience. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Procore. Construction management platform providing project management, financials, quality and safety, and workforce management for the construction industry.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NYSE: PCOR); ~3,000 employees.
- Offices: Carpinteria, CA HQ, Austin, distributed.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the construction project management surface.
- Best at: Making construction project management digital and collaborative. Complex multi-stakeholder workflows across office and field.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba multi-stakeholder enterprise platform + Thermo Fisher field operations → Procore's construction project management across office and field. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Toast. Restaurant technology platform providing POS, online ordering, payroll, and AI-powered operations management.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NYSE: TOST); ~5,000 employees.
- Offices: Boston HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Vertically integrated. Owns the full restaurant operations surface from POS to payroll.
- Best at: All-in-one restaurant technology that replaces multiple point solutions.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Allē dual-surface redesign + Red Cross systems consolidation → Toast's multi-surface restaurant operations. Boston HQ is a geographic consideration. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role with remote/Bay Area eligibility.
Veeva Systems. Cloud platform for the life sciences industry providing CRM, content management, regulatory, and clinical trial solutions.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (NYSE: VEEV); ~7,000 employees; ~$2.5B revenue.
- Offices: Pleasanton, CA HQ (Bay Area).
- Value chain: Vertically integrated. Owns the life sciences commercial and regulatory surface.
- Best at: Dominating the life sciences vertical with deep regulatory expertise.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Veeva is the dominant life sciences platform with ~$2.5B revenue and ongoing regulatory product expansion.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Thermo Fisher pharma platform ($20M+ margin, 6 partners, 100% adoption) maps directly to Veeva's life sciences vertical. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role. Worth proactive outreach to design leadership even without a posting. The Thermo Fisher case is an unusually precise match.
Owner.com. AI-powered restaurant marketing and operations platform providing websites, online ordering, and customer engagement tools.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series B; ~200 employees; $60M+ raised.
- Offices: Remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the restaurant's digital presence and customer engagement surface.
- Best at: Making restaurant digital marketing accessible to independent operators.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series B.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Allē consumer platform + Equinox+ 0→1 build → Owner.com's restaurant digital marketing platform. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Dutchie. Cannabis commerce and compliance platform providing POS, e-commerce, and payments for dispensaries.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~400 employees; $500M+ raised; valued at ~$3.75B (2021, likely adjusted).
- Offices: Remote US.
- Value chain: Vertically integrated. Owns the dispensary operations surface from POS to compliance reporting.
- Best at: Navigating state-by-state cannabis regulations while providing a clean commerce experience.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Cannabis industry headwinds; valuation likely adjusted since 2021.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher regulated platform + Allē consumer commerce → Dutchie's regulated cannabis commerce. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Housecall Pro. Home services management platform providing scheduling, dispatch, invoicing, and customer communication for service businesses.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; $125M+ raised; valued at ~$1.2B.
- Offices: San Diego HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Competes with ServiceTitan in the home services vertical, focused on smaller businesses.
- Best at: Simplicity for small service businesses.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $1.2B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher field-deployed enterprise software → Housecall Pro's mobile-first service business management. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Podium. Local business communication and AI platform providing messaging, reviews, payments, and AI-powered customer interaction for multi-location businesses.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~1,200 employees; $460M raised; valued at ~$3B.
- Offices: Lehi, UT HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the customer communication surface for local businesses.
- Best at: Unifying customer communication channels (text, web chat, social) for local businesses.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $3B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Agentic Labs AI agent design + Alibaba multi-channel enterprise platform → Podium's AI-powered customer communication across channels. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.

8. Compliance, Identity & Trust Infrastructure

Every company in this cluster builds products where "prove it" is the value proposition. Prove this person is who they say they are. Prove this transaction is legitimate. Prove this company is compliant. The design work is making verification feel trustworthy without feeling burdensome. Your Alibaba enterprise trust and Thermo Fisher regulated-platform experience are the lead stories. Vanta is the highest-priority entry here: a live Head of Design role, a $365K–$513K cash range, and a ~40-person design org building agentic AI-native compliance experiences.

Vanta. Compliance automation platform helping companies achieve and maintain SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and other security certifications through continuous monitoring and AI-powered evidence collection.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; $203M raised; valued at ~$2.45B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the compliance management surface. AI automates evidence collection, gap analysis, and audit preparation. The AI Agent works across compliance workflows, drafts policies, completes questionnaires, verifies evidence, monitors vendor risk, and exposes MCP integrations.
- Best at: Making security compliance continuous rather than periodic. Making complex compliance frameworks comprehensible to non-security teams.
- Signals: Head of Design published July 6, 2026. Remote U.S. Cash range $365K–$513K. Responsibility for a ~40-person design org across GRC, Trust, Platform, Self-serve, and AI. Role language explicitly names agentic AI-native product experiences, AI-native design practice, agentic UX patterns, and quality systems. Thirteen days old. Inside the highest-value action window.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 3. Alibaba enterprise trust (compliance-adjacent, $50B+ GMV governance) + trust essay (agentic supervision framework) + Agentic Labs (agent design proof) map directly. TinyFish gives you practitioner credibility on agent traces and governance. The role is almost over-explicit about the control, auditability, and trust surfaces that match your published work. Act.
Checkr. AI-powered background check platform used by 140,000+ companies for employment screening, identity verification, and compliance.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~800 employees; $579M raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, Denver.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the verification infrastructure that employers build hiring workflows on.
- Best at: Making background checks fast and fair. AI-powered adjudication that needs to be explainable, auditable, and compliant with Fair Chance hiring laws.
- Signals: Staff Product Designer, Growth updated July 13, 2026 in SF/Denver. Staff IC focused on growth, not core verification product.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + trust essay's explainability framework → Checkr's AI-powered adjudication transparency. Growth focus is less relevant than core product. Watch. Monitor for Director+ or core-product design role.
Qualia. Real estate closing platform digitizing title, escrow, and closing workflows for SMB and enterprise transaction processing.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~400 employees; $250M+ raised.
- Offices: Austin, TX. ⚠️ Austin-only, no Bay Area or remote confirmed.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the real estate closing workflow surface.
- Best at: Digitizing a paper-heavy, regulation-heavy process. Making complex legal and financial workflows trustworthy and efficient.
- Signals: Director of Product Design updated June 25, 2026. At 24 days, within the action window. But Austin-only location is a geographic downgrade.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Thermo Fisher regulated platform + Red Cross systems consolidation → Qualia's paper-to-digital real estate closing. Geographic flag: Austin-only. Watch if remote eligibility can be confirmed. Otherwise Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: remote eligibility confirmed.
Ironclad. AI-powered contract lifecycle management platform for creating, negotiating, signing, and managing contracts.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; $333M raised; valued at ~$3.2B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the contract workflow surface from drafting through execution and management.
- Best at: Making contract management intelligent rather than administrative. AI-generated contract language that lawyers need to trust.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $3.2B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's verification framework + Alibaba enterprise trust → Ironclad's AI-generated contract language that legal teams must trust. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Persona. Identity verification platform providing KYC, age verification, and fraud prevention through document verification, selfie matching, and database checks.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~300 employees; $250M raised; valued at ~$1.5B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ.
- Value chain: Infrastructure layer. Provides the identity verification APIs that other companies build on.
- Best at: Making identity verification seamless for end users while providing rich fraud signals to businesses.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $1.5B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's trust ladder → Persona's identity verification UX where the verification experience must feel trustworthy to end users. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Alloy. Identity verification and risk decisioning platform for banks and fintech companies, providing KYC/AML compliance and fraud prevention.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~300 employees; $187M raised; valued at ~$1.55B.
- Offices: New York HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the compliance decisioning infrastructure for financial institutions.
- Best at: Orchestrating multiple identity verification sources into a single risk decision. Making complex compliance logic transparent to compliance officers.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $1.55B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + Carrier IQ automation → Alloy's multi-source compliance decisioning. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Socure. AI-powered identity verification and fraud prevention platform providing real-time identity decisioning for financial institutions and government agencies.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; $196M raised; valued at ~$4.5B.
- Offices: New York HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides identity verification infrastructure with AI-powered risk scoring.
- Best at: Predictive identity verification that reduces false positives.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $4.5B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's AI verification framework → Socure's predictive identity scoring where false positives have real consequences. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Sardine. Fraud prevention and compliance platform providing real-time risk scoring, device intelligence, and AML compliance for fintech companies.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; ~200 employees; $105M raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides fraud detection and compliance infrastructure.
- Best at: Device-level fraud intelligence that catches sophisticated fraud patterns.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series C.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Carrier IQ automation intelligence + Alibaba enterprise trust → Sardine's fraud detection dashboards. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
OneTrust. Privacy, security, and governance platform helping companies manage data privacy, third-party risk, ethics, and ESG compliance.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~2,500 employees; $920M raised; valued at ~$5.1B.
- Offices: Atlanta HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the enterprise privacy and compliance management surface.
- Best at: Comprehensive privacy and governance management across regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.).
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $5.1B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise governance + Thermo Fisher regulated compliance → OneTrust's multi-regulation privacy management. Atlanta HQ is a geographic consideration. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role with remote/Bay Area eligibility.
Remote. Global employment platform enabling companies to hire, pay, and manage employees and contractors in 60+ countries with compliance automation.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~1,500 employees; $496M raised; valued at ~$3B.
- Offices: Remote-first globally, US distributed.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the global employment compliance surface.
- Best at: Making global employment legally compliant without requiring local entities.
- Signals: Senior Staff Product Designer was posted but the Greenhouse page shows May 13, 2026. At 67 days, beyond the freshness threshold. Likely filled or stale.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba global enterprise platform + Thermo Fisher multi-partner compliance → Remote's global employment compliance across 60+ jurisdictions. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: refreshed Director+ design role.

9. Enterprise Intelligence & Decision Support

AI generates the analysis. A human executive acts on it. The distance between "the model says" and "I trust this enough to make a $10M decision" is a design problem, and your Alibaba enterprise trust experience addresses it directly. One Watch entry here. AlphaSense just raised $350M at $7.5B with $600M+ ARR as of June 2026. The design investment signal is strong even though the current posting is Staff-level. At that ARR growth rate, a Director+ posting is a matter of timing.

AlphaSense. AI-powered market intelligence platform providing enterprise search across financial documents, earnings calls, expert interviews, and proprietary research.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~2,000 employees; $350M raised June 2026; $7.5B valuation; $600M+ ARR.
- Offices: New York HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the enterprise research and intelligence surface. AI powers search, summarization, and insight generation across massive document corpora. Design influence is high: the research experience IS the product.
- Best at: Making AI-generated financial insights trustworthy enough for investment decisions. Provenance, citation, and confidence signaling in AI-generated analysis.
- Signals: Senior/Staff Product Designer updated July 16, 2026, compensation $160K–$260K. Staff IC, not Director+. But $350M in fresh funding (June 2026) and $600M ARR = design org expansion is likely.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust ($50B+ GMV, multi-stakeholder decision surfaces) → AlphaSense's AI-generated financial intelligence where provenance and citation determine whether executives trust the output. Watch. Monitor for Director+ posting. The June funding makes this a high-probability expansion target.
Glean. Enterprise AI search platform connecting to company data sources (Slack, Google Drive, Confluence) and providing AI-powered search, summarization, and knowledge management.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~500 employees; $360M+ raised; valued at ~$4.6B.
- Offices: Palo Alto HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the enterprise knowledge search surface.
- Best at: Making enterprise knowledge findable. Trust in AI-generated answers that synthesize information from multiple internal sources.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Glean is growing rapidly in enterprise AI search; design leadership expansion is likely.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + trust essay → Glean's AI-synthesized answers where employees must trust AI-generated knowledge. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Gong. Revenue intelligence platform recording and analyzing sales conversations using AI to provide coaching, deal insights, and forecasting.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~1,500 employees; $584M raised; valued at ~$7.2B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, distributed US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the sales conversation intelligence surface.
- Best at: Turning sales conversations into structured, actionable intelligence. Making AI-generated coaching feel helpful rather than like surveillance.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $7.2B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + Agentic Labs AI agent design → Gong's AI coaching where the design problem is making AI recommendations feel like help, not monitoring. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Observe.AI. Contact center AI platform providing real-time agent assistance, quality assurance, and conversation analytics for customer service teams.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; ~300 employees; $214M raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, distributed.
- Value chain: Application layer. Sits in the contact center workflow, providing AI-powered assistance to human agents.
- Best at: Real-time AI assistance for contact center agents. Coaching that helps agents in the moment without being distracting.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series C.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's supervision framework → Observe.AI's real-time AI assistance where agents must trust AI suggestions during live customer conversations. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Clari. Revenue platform providing AI-powered forecasting, pipeline management, and revenue intelligence for sales and finance teams.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~700 employees; $496M raised; valued at ~$2.6B.
- Offices: Sunnyvale, CA HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the revenue forecasting surface.
- Best at: AI-powered revenue forecasting that finance teams trust enough to report to the board.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $2.6B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust → Clari's AI-generated revenue forecasts where the design problem is confidence signaling for board-level decisions. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
ThoughtSpot. AI-powered analytics platform enabling business users to search and analyze data using natural language queries and AI-generated insights.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~700 employees; $670M raised; valued at ~$4.2B.
- Offices: Sunnyvale, CA HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the self-service analytics surface.
- Best at: Making data analytics accessible to non-technical business users through natural language search.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $4.2B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise data surfaces → ThoughtSpot's natural-language analytics where non-technical users must trust AI-generated data insights. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Weights & Biases. ML operations platform providing experiment tracking, model versioning, dataset management, and AI evaluation tools for machine learning teams.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~300 employees; $250M raised; valued at ~$1.25B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the ML development infrastructure.
- Best at: Making ML experiment tracking collaborative and reproducible.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series D at $1.25B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: TinyFish AI production experience + Agentic Labs → W&B's ML experiment tracking and model evaluation UX. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Databricks. Unified data and AI platform providing data lakehouse, ML, and generative AI capabilities for enterprise data teams.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~7,000 employees; $4.3B raised; valued at ~$43B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, distributed globally.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the data infrastructure that enterprise AI is built on.
- Best at: Unifying data engineering, data science, and AI on a single platform.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. At $43B and 7,000 employees, the design org is substantial. Leadership hires would be strategic.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise platform at massive scale ($50B+ GMV) → Databricks' challenge of unifying data engineering, science, and AI surfaces for enterprise teams. Bay Area HQ is a plus. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role or VP Design hire.
Highspot. Sales enablement platform providing AI-powered content management, training, and buyer engagement analytics for sales teams.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~700 employees; $645M raised; valued at ~$3.5B.
- Offices: Seattle HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the sales content and enablement surface.
- Best at: Making the right sales content findable at the right moment.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $3.5B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise platform + Retail Velocity field intelligence → Highspot's AI-powered sales content surfacing. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Coveo. AI-powered search and recommendations platform for enterprise websites, e-commerce, and customer service portals.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Public (TSX: CVO); ~800 employees.
- Offices: Montreal HQ. ⚠️ Canadian HQ; US presence exists but verify design leadership scope.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides the search and recommendation infrastructure that enterprises embed in their digital experiences.
- Best at: AI-powered relevance that improves enterprise search and commerce experiences.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise search and commerce → Coveo's AI-powered search relevance. Geographic flag: Montreal HQ may limit US design leadership scope. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: US-based Director+ design role.

10. Creative AI & Content Platforms

The thinnest portfolio match in the list. Be honest about that. The design problem here (humans guiding AI-generated creative output) is a supervision problem, which maps to your agentic AI pillar. But the audience (marketers, creators, designers) and the artifact (content, images, video) are different from your published work. Jasper has a live Director role, and the portfolio match requires a bridge through Brand Pulse and Retail Velocity. If you pursue anything in this cluster, lead with the trust essay and frame creative AI supervision as a variant of the agent-correction problem. Don't lead with Alibaba. It won't resonate.

Jasper. AI-powered content platform for enterprise marketing teams, providing AI writing, image generation, and brand voice management, valued at $1.5B.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series A (at $1.5B valuation); ~300 employees.
- Offices: Remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the enterprise marketing content surface. AI generates content that needs to match brand voice, comply with guidelines, and be trustworthy enough for publication.
- Best at: Enterprise-grade AI content generation with brand voice controls. Trust in AI-generated marketing content at enterprise scale.
- Signals: Director, Product Design is live, US remote, reports to CPO. Role emphasizes AI-first marketer workflows and AI coding/design tools.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Brand Pulse (real-time brand sentiment monitoring) + trust essay (AI supervision framework) → Jasper's enterprise AI content where brand voice compliance is the trust problem. Lead with Brand Pulse for domain adjacency and trust essay for supervision framing. Watch.
Canva. Design platform providing graphic design, presentation, video, and AI-powered creative tools for individuals and teams.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~4,000 employees; valued at ~$40B.
- Offices: Sydney HQ, San Francisco, Austin, distributed. ⚠️ Australian HQ but significant US presence.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the visual design surface for non-designers.
- Best at: Making design accessible to everyone. Integrating generative AI without undermining the simplicity that made Canva successful.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. At $40B and 4,000 employees, the design org is massive.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Agentic Labs AI product design → Canva's generative AI integration where maintaining simplicity during AI feature expansion is the core design challenge. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role in US office.
Runway. AI-powered creative platform providing video generation, editing, and visual effects tools using generative AI models.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~200 employees; $237M raised; valued at ~$1.5B.
- Offices: New York HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the AI video creation surface. The product IS the AI model output, mediated by the design of the creative workflow.
- Best at: Making AI video generation usable for creative professionals. Creative control over non-deterministic AI output.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series D at $1.5B valuation.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's agent-correction framework → Runway's creative control over non-deterministic AI video output. NYC location is a geographic consideration. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role with remote eligibility.
ElevenLabs. AI voice platform providing text-to-speech, voice cloning, and audio AI tools for content creators, developers, and enterprises.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~200 employees; valued at ~$11B.
- Offices: New York, London, distributed. US presence.
- Value chain: Platform layer. Provides voice AI infrastructure.
- Best at: Human-quality AI voice generation. Voice identity management and ethical guardrails for voice cloning.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. At $11B valuation with ~200 employees, the design org is small relative to valuation. A leadership hire could be transformative.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's trust ladder (Watch→Verify→Delegate) → ElevenLabs' voice cloning ethical guardrails and identity management. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Descript. AI-powered audio and video editing platform that treats media editing as document editing, with transcription, screen recording, and AI-powered editing tools.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series D; ~200 employees; $200M raised; valued at ~$550M.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the audio/video editing surface with a text-first approach.
- Best at: Making video editing as easy as editing a Google Doc. The design innovation IS the product.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series D at ~$550M valuation. Bay Area HQ is a plus.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Agentic Labs AI product design → Descript's text-first media editing where AI-generated edits need human verification. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Typeface. Enterprise generative AI platform for creating brand-consistent content across text, images, and video.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series B; ~200 employees; $165M raised; valued at ~$1B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Provides enterprise-grade generative AI with brand controls, compliance, and governance.
- Best at: Brand-safe generative AI with enterprise governance controls.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series B at ~$1B valuation. Bay Area HQ is a plus.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Brand Pulse brand sentiment + Alibaba enterprise governance → Typeface's enterprise AI content governance. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Writer. Enterprise AI platform providing AI writing, knowledge management, and workflow automation with enterprise-grade security and compliance.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series C; ~300 employees; $326M raised; valued at ~$1.9B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Competes with Jasper in enterprise AI content but emphasizes full-stack AI (custom models, knowledge graph, workflow automation) over point-solution content generation.
- Best at: Enterprise AI that companies can customize with their own data and models.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series C at ~$1.9B valuation. Bay Area HQ is a plus.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Alibaba enterprise trust + TinyFish enterprise AI platform experience → Writer's customizable enterprise AI. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Tome. AI-native presentation and storytelling platform generating presentations, documents, and visual narratives from prompts and data.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series B; ~100 employees; $75M raised; valued at ~$600M.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Owns the AI-native presentation surface.
- Best at: AI-generated presentations that look polished without manual design work.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series B at ~$600M valuation. Bay Area HQ is a plus.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Agentic Labs AI product design → Tome's AI-generated presentation quality control. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Grammarly. AI writing assistant providing grammar, style, tone, and clarity suggestions across web, desktop, and mobile, now expanding into generative AI content creation.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Private; ~800 employees; $400M raised; valued at ~$13B.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ, remote US.
- Value chain: Application layer. Embedded across writing surfaces (email, docs, chat).
- Best at: Ubiquitous writing assistance that works everywhere. Making AI suggestions helpful without being intrusive.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: $13B valuation. Bay Area HQ is a plus.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: trust essay's supervision framework → Grammarly's AI suggestions where helpfulness without intrusiveness across every writing surface is the design problem. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ design role.
Gamma. AI-native presentation platform generating polished slides, documents, and web pages from text prompts and outlines.
- Stage / Size / Capital: Series B; ~50 employees; $25M+ raised.
- Offices: San Francisco HQ.
- Value chain: Application layer. Competes with Tome in AI-native presentations. Small team means design leadership would be foundational.
- Best at: Speed. Generating a complete, styled presentation in seconds from a text prompt.
- Signals: No live design leadership posting. Last known milestone: Series B. Very small team. Bay Area HQ is a plus.
- Portfolio match + action: Portfolio match 2. Bridge: Equinox+ 0→1 speed (0→MVP in 3 months) → Gamma's early-stage design leadership where speed and foundational decisions define the product. Ignore-until-trigger. Trigger: Director+ or Head of Design role.

The distribution

Five of 100 companies have live Director+ roles matching your portfolio and open to Bay Area candidates: HackerOne, TRM Labs, Smartsheet, Givebutter, and Vanta. Prepare outreach for all five this week.

Twenty-two entries carry Watch verdicts. Highest-density Watch clusters: Developer Platforms (5), Fintech (4), Healthcare (3), Vertical SaaS (2). The remaining 73 are Ignore-until-trigger. Structural fit exists. No active signal justifies outreach today.

The pattern across all 100 is consistent: AI-native design leadership demand is spreading fastest in verticals where the design problem is supervision, trust, and high-stakes decision-making. Security companies need designers who can make autonomous agent decisions transparent. Fintech companies are building "agentic finance" teams. Healthcare companies need trust mechanisms for clinical AI. These are the verticals where your portfolio has the deepest structural advantage, and where most competing candidates have no relevant proof.

Proactive Outreach — No Live Posting, Strong Structural Match

Veeva Systems (life sciences, Bay Area, portfolio match 3) and Nava PBC (government services, portfolio match 3) are worth a warm intro or well-timed message to the design leader even without a live posting. For Veeva, lead with Thermo Fisher. For Nava, lead with Red Cross.

Check this list weekly against fresh signals. When an Ignore-until-trigger company posts a Director+ role, it moves to Watch or Act. When a Watch company's posting goes stale, it moves to Ignore. The rubric stays fixed. The signals move.

Things to follow up on...

Amplitude's Head of Product Design: The role published July 7 under new CPO Gab Menachem is a core-35 Act target that sits outside this 100 List but should be your highest-priority outreach this week alongside the five expansion Act companies named here.
Suno's stale posting plus fresh risk: The Head of Product Design role is 89 days old, but Pitchfork reported July 15 that hacked data exposed details about Suno's training sources, which makes any outreach a thesis conversation about trust and creator controls rather than a standard application.
Ramp's Director search state: At 41 days from the June 8 posting, Ramp's Director, Product Design role has crossed into verification territory, and the simultaneous Design Engineer and Senior Recruiter, Design postings suggest the search infrastructure is still active even if the Director req needs a status check.
Abridge's product-design gap: The only design leadership title confirmed is Brand Design Director, but recent announcements around clinical AI trust, nursing workflows, and evidence integration suggest product-design leadership demand is building underneath the brand hire.