Head of Design

At Vanta, our mission is to help businesses earn and prove trust. We believe that security should be monitored and verified continuously, and we empower companies to practice better security and prove it with ease. Vanta has a kind and talented team, and while some have prior security experience, many have been successful at Vanta without it. Vanta is hiring for a Head of Design (VP) to lead our design organization — setting direction for a ~40-person team, shaping the next generation of AI-native product experiences, and building the quality systems that let great design ship at scale. The Design team at Vanta shapes how security and compliance teams experience Vanta — from a startup founder building their security program for the first time to an enterprise security team managing hundreds of controls. The org spans all areas of Vanta — GRC, Trust, Platform, Self-serve, and AI — and includes product designers, visual designers, design engineering, content designers, and a user researcher, led by experienced design directors. As AI fundamentally changes what products can do and how they get built, this team is at an inflection point: the right leader will define what it means for a design org to be genuinely AI-forward — enabling designers to move faster, ship more, and contribute to product direction and delivery in new ways. This is the right role for a design leader who leads with AI fluency, brings strong taste and craft across interaction design and visual design, and has the operational instincts to build the systems that make quality a consistent property of the whole org. What you’ll do as Head of Design at Vanta: - Lead a team of ~40 designers and design directors across GRC, Trust, Platform, Self-serve, and AI — setting org-wide direction and enabling each leader to do their best work - Lead the team building the next generation of agentic, AI-native product experiences — defining what great design looks like as Vanta’s products are increasingly shaped by AI - Establish an AI-native design practice: evolve agentic UX patterns, redesign team workflows around AI tooling, and define how design engineers and designers collaborate in an AI-first environment - Bring a strong point of view to design decisions — engaging deeply on interaction design, visual quality, and product direction, and building the trust that allows design decision-making to scale - Set a clear, shared standard for design quality across Vanta — spanning visual design, interaction design, and AI-enabled experiences — and build the systems that hold that bar consistently: design system, definitions of done, and launch review frameworks - Drive design as a first mover: shape design direction proactively, establishing the taste and systems that set the pace for the product and the org - Build strong partnerships with Product and Engineering, establishing shared quality frameworks embedded in how the whole org ships - Recruit and grow the team — develop existing leadership, maintain a high bar for AI fluency and design craft across every hire, and close capability gaps as the org evolves How to be successful in this role: - 15+ years of design experience, with 5+ years leading and scaling large design organizations, with director-level reports - Deep fluency in interaction design and visual craft — enjoys getting into the weeds, providing precise direction, and holding a high bar for quality across design decisions - Deep B2B SaaS experience — understanding the constraints of building for SMB and enterprise customers, complex workflows, multi-user products, and platform-level design challenges - Org-level AI fluency: has built AI tooling, workflows, and cultural adoption into a design team’s practice, enabling teams to ship more and move faster; has a clear point of view on how AI changes design roles and team structure - Proven track record building quality systems: design system ownership, definitions of done, launch review processes, and quality framewo