Brand & Motion Designer

Gusto•San Francisco, NY

11h•Hybrid

About The Position

Gusto is expanding its in-house creative studio within a fast-moving, late-stage startup environment. The team is responsible for launching products, educating customers, running brand campaigns, and representing the brand at events, all while maintaining a consistent visual language and voice across digital channels, motion formats, and physical environments. This role is for a Brand & Motion Designer who is a hands-on maker, passionate about visual design and motion, takes ownership of creative output, and wants to shape how Gusto looks, feels, and moves. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on brand craft, motion design systems, and creating genuinely human B2B brand experiences. The designer will own creative work from concept to delivery, making critical judgment calls on typography, composition, color, and motion, including AI-assisted work. A key aspect of this role is integrating motion as a foundational element of brand building and ensuring it's part of the creative process from the outset. AI is integral to the team's workflow, used to accelerate progress, explore new territories, and bridge the gap between concept and reality. The ideal candidate will not only use these tools but also direct them, setting creative standards for AI output and helping to build guardrails and workflows for the team. This role is ideal for someone energized by hands-on work, deeply caring about craft and preference, and motivated by improving both output and process.

Requirements

6+ years of experience in brand design, visual design and motion for in-house studios, agencies, or content teams.
A portfolio that demonstrates robust design skills and creative thinking is required. It should include brand identity, product marketing, campaigns, and digital content. Please provide examples that explain how AI was part of your work and the decisions you made.
Robust design instincts across typography, color, composition, and motion direction—you know what makes work feel distinctive versus generic.
Expert proficiency in motion design principles and tools—Figma and Adobe Creative Cloud and motion tools like Calvary, Rive and Lottie.
A demonstrated point of view on AI in creative work — how to direct it, when to override it, and what it means to maintain a high creative standard when AI tools are part of the process.
Comfort migrating between big, brand-defining work and fast-turn executional needs.
Proficient collaboration skills across creative, production, marketing, and product partners.
A maker mindset—you enjoy improving how work gets made, not just making the work itself.
Experience developing or contributing to creative standards for AI-assisted production — guardrails, evaluation criteria, or workflows that help a team produce at a higher level with these tools.

Responsibilities

Design and execute visual and motion work across product launches, product education, brand campaigns, events, and digital channels.
Design and evolve brand systems, including motion guidelines, templates, and guardrails, that help the broader organization produce on-brand work consistently.
Integrate motion into the brand design process, establishing principles and patterns for animation that extend our visual identity into dynamic and digital formats.
Direct and evaluate AI-generated creative work, setting the standard for what's on-brand, what needs to be pushed further, and what shouldn't ship.
Use AI tools to compress the distance between concept and execution, exploring more territory, iterating faster, and raising the quality bar on every deliverable.
Partner closely with other creatives and cross-functional partners across marketing, product, and growth from early concept through final delivery.
Build repeatable templates and workflows that enable faster turnaround without sacrificing quality.
Maintain brand integrity across a wide range of deliverables — including work where AI tools played a role in production — ensuring everything feels cohesive, human, and unmistakably Gusto.