Head of Design

If interested, please send a portfolio to [oliver@zealotlabs.com]. We read everything. The company:- Zealot trains AI to do offensive cybersecurity work that, until recently, only a small number of elite humans could do. We sell to the military and intelligence community. Our customers operate in environments where the stakes are measured in lives and strategic outcomes — not engagement metrics.We are looking for our first Head of Design.The bar is the design language of companies like Anduril and Palantir: serious, restrained, technically literate, and unmistakably itself. We are not interested in defense-tech cosplay. We are interested in design that earns the trust of operators, engineers, and program managers who can tell the difference between substance and theater within ten seconds.What you'll ownThe full surface area of Zealot's design — brand identity and visual system; the marketing site and any future microsites; the UX and UI of internal and customer-facing products; recruiting collateral that helps us pull top vulnerability researchers away from the agencies and big tech; pitch decks, one-pagers, and capability documents that go to government customers and investors; promotional video direction; and the physical environment of our DC office as it scales.You will work directly with the CEO and founding team. You will be in rooms where we decide what the company is. You will hire the next designers, illustrators, and motion people as we grow.Who you are: You have shipped work at the level we want to operate at — at a defense tech company, a serious infrastructure or security company, a respected studio (Pentagram, Manual, Order, Instrument, Area 17), or as the design lead at a high-conviction startup. You can show us a portfolio where the typography, grid, and information density were the result of thinking, not templates.You write well. Design at Zealot is inseparable from voice and copy, and you will be partly responsible for both.You are technical enough to have opinions about how a product is built, not just how it looks. You can work in Figma fluently and are comfortable working alongside engineers who are shipping in Next.js, React, and Tailwind. Bonus if you can prototype in code.You understand that the customer is not you. Our users include uniformed military, intelligence officers, and the engineers who support them. Empathy for that user — earned, not assumed — matters.You are willing to operate in a security-conscious environment. We are pursuing a facility clearance. Some of what you design will be classified. US persons only; willingness to obtain a clearance required.Logistics:Strongly prefer in-person at our office in Washington, DC. Compensation is competitive with senior design leadership at top-tier startups, plus meaningful early-stage equity. We expect this hire to be a long-term bet on both sides.