3+ years in brand or visual design, ideally in-house.
Portfolio showcasing meaningful brand evolution, not just execution.
Strong art direction skills with a focus on vision and concept development.
Experience across digital, print, environmental mediums, and some motion design.
Ability to create systems and templates for efficient brand management.
Proactive ownership of projects and initiatives, with strong decision-making skills.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Responsibilities
Audit and assess current brand presence across all platforms.
Develop a comprehensive understanding of Ascend's products and customer interactions.
Lead the visual system for Altitude 2027, ensuring consistency across mediums.
Propose and align on the brand's future direction with leadership and design teams.
Create templates and toolkits for on-brand production by other teams.
Codify the brand into a living system of guidelines and components.
Utilize AI and code to innovate visual tools and generative systems.
Benefits
Unlimited PTO
Meaningful equity
Dog-friendly office
Commuter benefits
Free lunch in the office every day
Health care for you and your dependents
Full Job Description
The Role
You'll own Ascend's brand: its expression, evolution, and architecture as we grow. You'll report to the head of design and partner closely with product and marketing. We don't treat brand and product as separate disciplines - the product is where the brand is proven, and the brand is how the product is understood. We want someone who treats brand as infrastructure as much as expression, with the instincts of an art director.
Give the brand fuller expression. Much of our brand lives in reputation. Evolve and codify it across every medium and touchpoint.
Own the brand's architecture. Products, our AI agent, Altitude 2027, acquired brands: decide what's shared, what's distinct, and how the family grows.
Own the moments where customers meet us. Launches, email, onboarding, proposals, case studies - the surfaces that decide whether someone trusts us with their money.
Experiment with code and AI. Build tools and generative systems that produce form no template could, and put that range in everyone's hands.
Make the brand a living system. Spot patterns, make them self-serve, and keep it responsive as the company changes.
Propose where the brand goes next. Bring a defensible point of view, and push the work further than the brief asked.
Responsibilities Will Include
Objective #1: In your first 30 days:
Learn Ascend's products, our customers, and how money moves through insurance
Audit every place the brand shows up today, from product and web to email, decks, events, and print, and map where it's strong, thin, or inconsistent
Get fluent in our design system and how brand and product share it
Ship real work early by taking over recurring brand and marketing requests
Present an initial point of view: what the brand gets right, what's missing, and where you'd invest first
Objective #2: In your first 60 days:
Take over Altitude 2027's visual system and carry it through to print: signage, wayfinding, program, merch, stage and screen
Propose a direction for the brand's next chapter through references, texture, imagery, and type, and align design, marketing, and leadership around it
Define the brand architecture: how our products, our AI agent, events, and acquired brands relate to Ascend
Build the first templates and toolkits that let teams produce on-brand work without routing through you
Objective #3: In your first 90 days and beyond:
Deliver Altitude 2027 in May, end to end
Codify the evolved brand into a living system of guidelines and components that people actually use, across every medium
Use code and AI to build visual tools and generative systems that expand what the brand can look like
Own the visual layer of onboarding, lifecycle email, and product launches, alongside product design
Track where the brand holds and where it drifts, and keep refining it as the company grows
Must Have
3+ years in brand or visual design, ideally in-house. We care more about the work than the number.
A portfolio that shows you built or meaningfully evolved a brand system, not only executed against someone else's.
Art direction ability: you can build a vision from references, imagery, texture, and type, and show the thinking behind it, not just the finished pieces.
Range across mediums: digital, print, environmental, and enough motion to bring things to life.
Systems instincts: we know when to build a template, a pattern, or a tool instead of another one-off asset.
Ownership: you run initiatives end to end, propose before you're asked, and can defend a decision or change your mind when the argument is better.
Clear communication, written and spoken. You can explain why something works and why it doesn't.
Nice to Have
Experience with B2B, fintech, or technical products
Motion design or animation
Comfort working near code or a headless CMS
AI fluency: using AI to explore, experiment, and build internal tools
