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: you 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

Base Salary Range: $100,000-$150,000