Brand Design Manager

Gusto • Denver, CO;San Francisco, CA;New York, NY;Los Angeles, CA;Seattle, WA • 1m ago

Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs

Brand Design Manager roles are increasingly central in SaaS, where trust, clarity, and consistency across digital touchpoints influence adoption as much as product capability. This position sits inside an in house creative studio at a mature SaaS company, with responsibility spanning the channels that typically define the SaaS funnel, including web, lifecycle email, paid media, and product marketing surfaces. The explicit emphasis on AI enabled workflows also reflects a broader shift in how SaaS teams are shortening iteration cycles and expanding creative throughput.

From a SaaS career perspective, the role builds durable experience in operationalizing brand at scale. Leading a small team while developing systems, templates, and guidelines maps closely to the repeatability demands of subscription businesses, where campaigns and launches recur and performance feedback is continuous. Regular partnership with marketing leadership and cross functional stakeholders mirrors how SaaS work is prioritized, shipped, and evaluated across functions.

This role tends to suit a design leader who wants people management to be a primary lever, not an add on to individual contribution. It also fits someone motivated by building process and standards alongside craft, and who prefers close collaboration with marketing and product adjacent teams in a metrics informed environment.

The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.

Job Description

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

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.
Explore and integrate modern design tools—including AI-enabled workflows—to expand creative possibilities and improve team efficiency.
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.

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