Design Director (Hands-On IC)
Athlete to Athlete
Design
Santa Monica, CA, USA
USD 135k-165k / year + Equity
Posted on Jan 29, 2026
About Athlete to Athlete
Athlete to Athlete (A2A) is the leading technology platform connecting youth athletes with verified college athletes for online coaching and mentorship. Our mission is to build driven, confident, and resilient people through sports.
We’re building a category-defining product that could serve 60M+ youth athlete families, and we’re looking for a hands-on Design Director to own and elevate the end-to-end design experience.
This is a player-coach role: you will define the design vision for the company and personally execute the work. You’ll spend most of your time designing flows, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity UI while laying the foundation for a future design team.
If you thrive in fast-paced startup environments, love turning ambiguity into clarity, and want massive ownership over a product with real-world impact, this role is for you.
The Role
As Design Director, you will lead design across the A2A platform; Owning UX, UI, and visual direction while operating as the company’s lead individual contributor. You’ll partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to shape what we build, why we build it, and how it comes to life.You’ll establish high design standards, build scalable systems, and ship experiences that feel intuitive, polished, and human without losing startup speed. We strongly prefer an onsite model (3–5 days/week) in our Santa Monica office.
What You’ll Do
- Own and execute end-to-end product design across web and mobile (wireframes → prototypes → high-fidelity → production-ready assets)
- Serve as the lead individual contributor for all UI/UX work
- Define and evolve A2A’s design vision, principles, and product experience
- Translate user needs and business goals into elegant, simple, and scalable solutions
- Design experiences across our full ecosystem: Youth Athletes, Guardians, Mentors, and Internal Teams
- Partner deeply with Product and Engineering on roadmap shaping, problem framing, and solution definition
- Build and maintain a scalable design system that enables speed, consistency, and accessibility
- Balance craft, usability, and velocity knowing when to perfect and when to ship
- Advocate for the user through strong storytelling, prototypes, and clear rationale
What You’ve Done
- 10+ years of product design experience, including 5+ years in lead roles
- Proven success designing consumer products in fast-moving, product-led companies
- Strong portfolio demonstrating world-class craft and clear business impact
- Deep experience with Figma (components, auto-layout, prototyping, design systems)
- Experience across subscription products, marketplaces, consumer apps, and/or video
- Fluency in motion and interaction design (Lottie, After Effects, ProtoPie, etc. a plus)
- Strong understanding of design systems, UX strategy, and design-engineering collaboration
- Experience designing responsive web and mobile experiences
- Comfort working in ambiguity and iterating quickly
- Understanding of AI-driven UX and conversational interfaces is a plus
- Bonus: Passion for youth sports, college athletics, or mentorship
Who You Are
- Deeply understands and embraces that we are building experiences used by minors, where trust, safety, and emotional impact matter deeply
- A strategic thinker who can zoom out to vision and zoom in to pixels
- Comfortable in scrappy environments where process is lightweight and impact is high
- Opinionated, but highly collaborative
- A builder first - energized by shipping, iterating, and owning outcome
Athlete to Athlete is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran or disability status.
135000 - 165000 USD a year
Compensation:
Base salary range: $135,000–$165,000 + competitive equity + benefits (final offer dependent on experience and location).