Brand Designer

Ascend; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Dog friendly office

Free lunch in office everyday

Health care for you and your dependets

Job summary

Ascend is seeking a senior brand designer to own the brand expression, architecture, and living system as we scale. You’ll report to the head of design and partner with product and marketing to ensure the brand is proven in every product and touchpoint.

In your first 90 days you’ll lead Altitude 2027 visuals, define the brand direction across media, and build templates so teams can produce on-brand work without bottlenecks.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in brand or visual design, preferably in-house.
• Portfolio showing built or evolved brand systems.

Responsibilities

• Own the brand expression, architecture, and living system as we scale.
• Lead Altitude 2027 visuals and carry the brand through print, digital, and events.
• Define brand direction and build templates so teams can work on-brand without bottlenecks.
• Apply code and AI tools to extend the brand’s capabilities.
• Track brand performance and refine as the company grows.

Skills

Brand design

Art direction

Systems thinking

Cross-functional

Rapid prototyping

Job description

Insurance is a $10T industry still running on PDFs, email threads, and manual reconciliation. Ascend is changing that. We built the first and only complete financial operations platform purpose-built for insurance — combining accounting automation, payments, and premium financing in a single vertically integrated solution. In five years, we've become the market leader: over 4,000 businesses, including more than half of the 50 largest brokers in the country, trust Ascend to bring clarity to complex accounting operations from collection to close.

How We Do It

Ascend automates the financial operations that insurers, MGAs, and agencies run every day and embeds directly into the transactions where money actually moves. Point solutions are easy to build and even easier to copy. The companies that win won't just sell tools — they'll capture value where the money actually moves. Ascend is built for exactly that moment. Our customers don't just adopt software, they unlock measurable efficiency with a proven 5-7x return on investment.

Our team is onsite in San Francisco. We bring deep expertise in insurance, fintech, and financial infrastructure to build what the industry has never had.

Why We Do It

The insurance industry intermediates trillions of dollars — and almost none of that infrastructure was built for the modern era. Legacy systems aren't just inefficient; they're a ceiling on what the industry can become.

Ascend's mission is to become the leading financial automation platform for insurance by 2030 — powering the financial operations of the entire industry and transforming the way trillions of dollars move. We're not building another point solution, we're building the financial backbone of insurance.

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
• 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

• Dog friendly office
• Free lunch in office everyday
• Health care for you and your dependents

We are committed to equal opportunity employment and embrace diversity within our organization. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We encourage candidates to apply even if their experience doesn't precisely match this opportunity. We value diversity and are dedicated to equal opportunity employment.