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Salary: USD 100,000 - 150,000 / annual
Ascend is a Series A fintech company building the first complete financial operations platform purpose-built for insurance. The platform combines accounting automation, payments, and premium financing, serving over 4,000 businesses including more than half of the 50 largest insurance brokers in the country.
You will own Ascend's brand—its expression, evolution, and architecture as the company scales. You'll report to the head of design and partner closely with product and marketing teams. The role treats brand and product as integrated disciplines, with the product serving as proof of the brand and the brand as the vehicle for understanding the product.
Key responsibilities include:
**First 30 days:** Learn Ascend's products, customers, and insurance financial flows. Audit every brand touchpoint (product, web, email, decks, events, print) to map strengths, gaps, and inconsistencies. Master the design system and how brand and product share it. Ship recurring brand and marketing requests. Present an initial point of view on what the brand gets right, what's missing, and where to invest first.
**First 60 days:** Own the visual system for Altitude 2027 (a major event) through print, signage, wayfinding, program, merchandise, stage, and screen. Propose a direction for the brand's next chapter through references, texture, imagery, and type; align design, marketing, and leadership. Define brand architecture for products, the AI agent, events, and acquired brands. Build first templates and toolkits enabling teams to produce on-brand work independently.
**First 90 days and beyond:** Deliver Altitude 2027 end-to-end. Codify the evolved brand into a living system of guidelines and components across all mediums. Use code and AI to build visual tools and generative systems expanding brand possibilities. Own the visual layer of onboarding, lifecycle email, and product launches alongside product design. Track brand consistency and refine as the company grows.
The role requires treating brand as infrastructure as much as expression, with the instincts of an art director. You'll give the brand fuller expression, own its architecture across product lines and acquired brands, control customer touchpoints (launches, email, onboarding, proposals, case studies), experiment with code and AI to generate novel forms, make the brand a self-serve living system, and propose strategic directions.
**Requirements:**
- 3+ years in brand or visual design, preferably in-house (portfolio quality valued over years)
- Portfolio demonstrating you built or meaningfully evolved a brand system, not just executed someone else's
- Art direction ability: build vision from references, imagery, texture, and type; show thinking, not just finished pieces
- Range across mediums: digital, print, environmental, and motion
- Systems instincts: know when to build templates, patterns, or tools instead of one-off assets
- Ownership: run initiatives end-to-end, propose proactively, defend decisions or adapt when arguments are stronger
- Clear written and spoken communication; explain why something works or doesn't
**Nice to have:**
- B2B, fintech, or technical product experience
- Motion design or animation
- Comfort working near code or headless CMS
- AI fluency for exploration, experimentation, and internal tool building
