About the Role

We're hiring an Art Director, Brand Systems to be the creative anchor of the Relay brand as we scale. This is a hands-on, systems-minded role for someone who's done this work before - built and operationalized a design system in Figma, shipped high-quality work across every medium a modern B2B brand needs, and uses AI tools fluently to move faster without compromising craft.

You'll report directly to the Creative Director and partner closely on everything from sales enablement to campaigns to web to our conference program (we attend more than 100 a year). You'll also help shape the team - bringing on a Production Designer hired alongside this role, providing direction to freelance partners, and growing into a player-coach who runs day-to-day creative output.

This is a role with real influence and a clear runway. You won't be one of many. You'll be the senior creative voice running the day-to-day, freeing the Creative Director to focus on brand strategy, campaigns, and bigger-picture creative direction. As the team grows, so does your scope.

What You'll Do

Build and own our design system. This is the core of the role. You'll establish, scale, and maintain a Figma design system that brings consistency to every surface of the brand - component libraries, tokens, typography and color systems, layout patterns, and documentation that empowers the rest of the team to produce on-brand work without bottlenecks. You'll also bring AI tools into how the system is built and maintained, using AI assistants for naming conventions, decision logic, documentation, and ongoing consistency audits across the system. You've done this before, and you know what good looks like.

Lead day-to-day creative production across every medium we touch. Sales enablement (one-pagers, decks, segment- and partner-specific collateral), conference materials (booths, signage, takeaways, swag), digital advertising, web, and ongoing brand work. You'll move fluidly between print, digital, physical, and web - and make smart calls about what each format demands.

Use AI as a force multiplier. You'll integrate AI tools into your daily workflow for ideation, layout exploration, asset variation, and production. You'll build prompt libraries, templates, and repeatable workflows the rest of the team can plug into.

Translate strategy into creative. Take direction from the Creative Director and stakeholders across the company and turn it into briefs, moodboards, and finished work that ladders back to brand and business goals.

Set and hold the quality bar. Review work, give clear and constructive feedback, and make sure everything that ships under the Relay name is on-brand, on-strategy, and well-crafted.

Mentor and grow the team. You'll partner with and eventually manage a Production Designer (hired alongside this role), provide direction to freelance partners, and help shape the operating rhythm of an in-house creative team that's still being built.

Partner with the Creative Director on brand evolution. As the company grows, the brand will need to evolve with it. You'll be a key thought partner on how the visual system stretches into new channels, audiences, and campaigns.

What Success Looks Like

• A live, well-documented Figma design system that the whole company is working from - not a theoretical PDF, a working operating system.
• AI-assisted workflows woven into how the system is built and maintained. Audits run, documentation kept current, decisions logged. The system is more explainable, more consistent, and easier to scale than it would be without AI in the loop.
• Faster turnaround on sales enablement and conference work because the system, templates, and AI workflows you've built do the heavy lifting.
• A consistently higher creative bar across every surface of the brand - paid, web, print, conference, and product marketing.
• A small, tight team (Production Designer + freelancers) running smoothly under your direction, with clear briefs, predictable timelines, and work that ships on time.
• The Creative Director freed up to focus on strategy, campaigns, and brand direction - confident the day-to-day is in good hands.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of design or art direction experience, with a portfolio that demonstrates both systems thinking and high-craft execution.
• Proven experience building and scaling a design system in Figma at another company. This is non-negotiable. In your portfolio or interview, we'll want to see the libraries, tokens, and documentation you've shipped - and hear how teams adopted them.
• Recent, hands-on experience using AI tools as part of your design workflow, specifically as thinking partners for system architecture, consistency audits, documentation, and decision logic. We're looking for designers who've spent the last 12 to 18 months actively living in AI tools, not designers who are curious about them.
• Expert proficiency in Figma and Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign).
• Strong cross-medium range. You're equally comfortable directing a print one-pager, a website module, a tradeshow booth, and a digital ad - and you understand what each medium demands.
• Experience providing creative direction and feedback to other designers, and a genuine interest in mentorship and team building.
• Excellent communication. You can translate strategy into creative direction, write a clear brief, and explain creative decisions to non-creative stakeholders.
• A calm, organized approach to managing multiple projects and competing priorities. You can hold the bar without slowing the work down.

Nice to Have

• B2B SaaS experience (highly desirable).
• Experience in a high-growth startup environment.
• Web design fluency and comfort partnering with developers.
• Motion or video direction experience.
• Photography direction or production experience.
• Conference and event creative experience.
• Experience integrating AI into team-wide design operations, not just personal workflow.