Brand Design Manager

About Design at Gusto

Design at Gusto is made up of over 80 creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to empower small businesses and their employees. We're a cross-functional group that is always looking for opportunities to build understanding and empathy for the people who use Gusto. We don't care much about swim lanes and though we care deeply about quality and craft, we are never precious about it. We work closely with cross-functional partners in Product, Engineering, Data, and Marketing to design, build, and ship experiences that make a real difference. We believe great design can make hard things possible, even delightful.

We are building an AI-native design organization — and we mean that seriously. We're looking for designers who are already working this way: using AI to prototype ideas quickly, shorten customer feedback loops, and ship quality UX directly to customers. This isn't a future aspiration — it's how we work now, and it's changing what the design role looks like at Gusto and across the industry.

About the Opportunity

Brand design is where our identity comes to life. Visual craft, consistency, and clarity aren't finishing touches—they're the work. They're how we earn trust, convey confidence, and make people feel something.

Gusto is growing our in-house creative studio inside our fast-moving, late-stage startup. We design campaigns, brand systems, and multi-channel marketing assets—partnering closely with marketing, product marketing, and comms to bring Gusto's brand to life across every touchpoint. Our work spans paid media, email, web, social, and experiential.

We're looking for a Brand Design Manager (we call these People Empowerers, or PEs at Gusto) to lead a small team of brand and motion designers. You'll set creative direction, develop talent, and ensure visual quality and brand consistency across everything we ship. This is a leadership role—you'll be managing people, not just making the work.

In this role, you'll coach and mentor designers, set the creative bar for brand design, and partner cross-functionally with marketing leadership to prioritize and deliver high-impact work. You'll also help us scale building design systems, workflows, and templates that let the team move faster without sacrificing quality or brand integrity.

If you're energized by developing people, care deeply about brand craft, and enjoy building the systems that make great creative work repeatable, this role will be an excellent fit.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day

• Define and maintain quality standards for AI-generated brand work (establishing what passes, what fails, and why) so the team can move fast without drifting from the brand.
• Demonstrated ability to evaluate AI-generated creative work critically—knowing when to use it, when to redirect it, and how to articulate why a generated direction fails Gusto's brand standards. Experience establishing those standards for others, not just their own practice.
• Has established or contributed to AI creative governance: what the team will and won't use AI for, how to QA AI outputs, and how to maintain brand integrity at higher production volumes.
• Manage, mentor, and develop a small team of brand and motion designers—setting expectations, providing feedback, and supporting career growth.
• Set creative direction and maintain visual quality across campaigns, paid media, email, web, social, experiential and product marketing.
• Build and maintain scalable design systems, templates, and brand guidelines.
• Partner closely with marketing, product marketing, comms, and creative leadership to prioritize work and translate strategy into visual execution.
• Define and improve team workflows, processes, and production standards to scale creative output.
• Track record of raising quality standards in an environment where AI is accelerating output — and keeping the bar high when the temptation is to ship faster and evaluate less.
• Contribute directly to creative work when needed, maintaining a strong connection to the craft.

Here’s what we’re looking for

• 8+ years of professional brand design experience spanning campaign, marketing, and brand systems work.
• 2–4+ years of direct people management experience leading brand or production designers.
• A portfolio demonstrating strong craft, brand-building work, and range across multi-channel marketing.
• Expertise in Figma and Adobe Creative Suite; familiarity with motion tools a plus.
• AI fluency in creative workflows and processes, with hands-on familiarity with generative AI tools for design, ideation, and production.
• Experience building and maintaining scalable design systems and templates.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills in fast-paced, high-output environments.
• A leadership mindset—you enjoy developing people and building systems, not just making the work yourself.

Compensation Details

At Gusto, we strive to provide rewards that empower employees to achieve their financial and personal goals. We offer competitive compensation packages with a strong emphasis on equity based compensation (ownership in Gusto). To learn more about Gusto’s compensation philosophy and benefits offerings please view our Total Rewards Approach page.

Our cash compensation range for this role is $172,000/yr to $215,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $202,000/yr to $253,000/yr in San Francisco, Seattle & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.