Institutional Product Lead, Cycles Prime

The Opportunity

Crypto trading firms have billions in working capital trapped in bilateral exposures across venues. Cycles Prime frees it. No collateral, no escrow, no new counterparties.

We're in pilot with several of the largest trading firms in the market. The next chapter is bigger. We need a founding product hire to take Cycles Prime from closed pilot to public launch, then expand on-chain clearing infrastructure to new institutional segments.

About Cycles

Cycles' mission is to clear the most debt, for the most people, with the least money. We are building a neutral clearing layer that interconnects every settlement network across global financial markets. By optimizing payment and credit flows, Cycles resolves gridlock and improves capital efficiency and liquidity across the financial system.

We recently closed a $6.4M round led by Blockchange Ventures, with Coinbase Ventures, Compound VC, and Primitive Ventures participating. Total funding to date: $8.7M. Earlier backers include CMCC Global, Maven 11, Nascent, and Cygni. Founded by Ethan Buchman (co-founder of Cosmos), originally incubated by Informal Systems.

About Cycles Prime

Cycles Prime is a clearing solution for trading firms that preserves working capital and reduces reliance on credit lines. It requires no collateral, no asset escrow, and no new counterparties, using a graph flow algorithm and advanced privacy technology to identify multilateral obligation cycles that can be netted, privately and provably, without moving cash.

About the Role

We're hiring our founding Institutional Product Lead to shape product and UX across Cycles Prime and the institutional offerings that follow.

You design and build for sophisticated financial users - traders, treasurers, ops teams, and finance leaders - and you know how to turn dense, high-stakes workflows into interfaces those people will actually trust. You bring strong experience in institutional fintech, trading platforms, prime brokerage, clearing and settlement, treasury, or crypto market infrastructure.

In this role you will:

• Lead product and design across institutional products, from discovery and user research through to shipped interfaces on web and (where relevant) mobile.
• Turn dense clearing, settlement, and treasury workflows into flows users can run with confidence.
• Define and own the product's design language, UX patterns, and interaction principles so institutional buyers trust what they see.
• Partner tight with engineering to prototype, test, and ship fast without dropping the quality bar.
• Run user research and usability testing yourself. Bring what you learn back into the product.
• Drive product strategy and roadmap. Find the next surfaces, prioritize the work, and decide what we ship.

What we are looking for

• 5+ years shipping institutional-grade products end-to-end, in fintech, payments, trading, clearing, or crypto market infrastructure.
• Track record of shipping products from 0→1 and iterating based on real customer feedback.
• You understand institutional users want control and transparency, not hand-holding. You can make sophisticated financial tools feel obvious without flattening the complexity.
• Strong product judgment plus real UX and information architecture chops for complex financial products.
• Fluent in Figma and the modern design toolkit. Solid grip on responsive design for web and mobile.
• You work well with engineers in fast-moving remote environments.
• Portfolio that shows systems thinking and clear UX reasoning, not just polished screens.
• Based in New York. The role is remote on paper but our clients and core team work happens in person. You should be in the city most weeks.

Some of our benefits include

• 20 days (4 weeks) of paid vacation annually, plus 3 Spiritual Days
• Company closure from December 25th to January 1
• Annual Lifestyle benefits (reimbursements for gym memberships, fitness equipment, etc)
• A remote first, flexible work environment
• A home office stipend to set you up for success
• Annual company retreats
• Paid parental leave

The salary range for this role is 130,000 to 190,000 USD and may vary based on factors like location and experience.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity in our organization. We are committed to equal employment opportunities and encourage applications from people of all race, religion, color, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.