Executive Design Advisor

CookUnity; New York (NY); On-site; USD 344,400 - 413,280; Full time

Job summary

CookUnity is seeking a design leader to elevate the brand and consumer experience, starting in an advisory capacity. You will shape the aesthetic bar, elevate how our product expresses the brand identity, and modernize design orgs for AI-native workflows.

We want someone with strong opinions about pixels who has scaled design teams, integrated AI-assisted tools, and can drive a credible uplift plan across the organization.

Qualifications

• Experience at VP or CDO level shaping product design at scale.
• Proven ability to build and lead high-performing design teams.
• Fluency in AI-assisted design tooling (e.g., Figma AI) integrated into real practice.

Responsibilities

• Own the vision for the brand visual identity and bring CookUnity to life with a differentiated design system.
• Apply top-tier B2C aesthetics to product surfaces and influence day-to-day craft and long-term language.
• Refine brand identity elements to support an expanding ecosystem of channels and formats.
• Define visual storytelling across marketing surfaces and packaging.
• Ensure brand cohesion through the marketing funnel and consumer journey.
• Identify where AI-assisted workflows can uplift design speed and quality, and plan implementation.
• Coach teams on new tools and workflows, delivering hands-on guidance on real projects.
• Collaborate with Product and Marketing to align design strategy with business priorities.

Skills

VP or CDO level experience

Leading design organizations

AI-assisted design tooling

Coaching mindset

Generative AI workflows

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Food has lost its soul to modern convenience. And with it, it has lost the power to nourish, inspire, and connect us. So in 2018, CookUnity was founded as the first-of-its-kind platform that connects the world with the source of truly great food: chefs. Today, CookUnity delivers 50 million meals a year from the industry’s best chefs to homes all over the country. Fresh. Ready-to-eat. And crafted with the passion that nourishes body and soul.

Unwilling to stop there, CookUnity is expanding beyond delivery to become an ever-innovating marketplace focused on our singular mission: empower Chefs to nourish the world.

If that mission has you hungry in more ways than one, you’ve found the right job posting.

About the Team:

Our Product & Design org spans Growth, Marketplace, New 0—> 1 bets, and Operations — building the experiences that connect chefs to the millions of people who eat their food every week. Design sits at the center of how we translate that mission into a product people love using.

The role:

CookUnity is looking for a design leader to elevate both the craft and the velocity of our design organization and consumer experience — starting in an advisory capacity. This is a mandate to shape the aesthetic bar for a fast-scaling consumer brand, elevate how the product expresses our brand identity, communicates our unique value proposition, and modernize how our design organization works in an AI-native era.

We're not looking for a figurehead. We're looking for someone who still has strong opinions about pixels, has run design orgs through real scale, and has already rewired how their teams work with AI-assisted tools — not as an experiment, but as standard practice.

Responsibilities:

• Own the vision for the brand visual identity and bring the essence of CookUnity to life through a differentiated design system that shapes all consumer touchpoints
• Bring a proven aesthetic sensibility from a top-tier B2C consumer brand and apply it to CookUnity's product surfaces, informing both day-to-day craft and our longer-term design language.
• Refine key elements of the brand identity system to up-level craft, refinement, and meet the needs of an expanding ecosystem of channels and activation formats
• Define CookUnity’s approach to visual storytelling across marketing surfaces and key consumer touchpoints like packaging
• Ensure design consistency and brand cohesion throughout the marketing funnel and consumer journey to maximize brand equity and recognition
• Diagnose where our design org can leapfrog in adopting AI-assisted workflows (Figma AI, generative design, prompt-to-design pipelines) and where the industry is heading, and build a credible, sequenced uplift plan.
• Coach new tools and workflows into daily practice — pairing directly with our design team on real projects, not just delivering a slide deck of recommendations.
• Partner closely with Product and Marketing leadership to ensure design strategy is tightly linked to product and business priorities.

Qualifications:

• VP or CDO-level experience at a top-tier, high-craft B2C consumer brand, with a track record of shaping product design at scale.
• Proven experience building and leading high-performing design organizations.
• Genuine fluency in AI-assisted design tooling (Figma AI, generative workflows, prompt-to-design pipelines) — you've already integrated these into a team's real practice, not just piloted them.
• A coaching mindset: able to walk into an existing team, diagnose gaps without demoralizing people, and bring them along — part teacher, part champion, part operator.
• Ability to leverage generative AI to increase output quality and speed.

Preferred requirements:

• Experience in food, wellness, marketplace, or subscription consumer businesses.

Learn More About CookUnity

We believe great leadership starts with alignment on vision, values, and ways of working. To give you deeper insight into who we are and what we're looking for, we invite you to explore: CookUnity's Leadership Principles – The values and behaviors that guide how we operate, collaborate, and scale.

We hope this provides valuable insight into our culture and product vision. If this excites you, we'd love to connect. Compensation for this role is open for discussion based on advisory capacity and time commitment.

Compensation

All final pay rates will be determined by candidates experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of the applicant, internal equity, and alignment with market data.

Pay Range for this position

$250 — $300 USD

CookUnity is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are dedicated to creating a community of inclusion and an environment free from discrimination or harassment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship status, protected veteran status, genetic information, or physical or mental disability.

A quick note for all candidates

We’ve recently seen an increase in recruitment scams across the industry, and we want to make sure you (and your data) stay safe while applying to CookUnity. We also want you to know that we take this seriously — sometimes, as part of our process, we may ask for a brief “proof of humanity” to confirm that we’re connecting with a real person, not an impersonator.

Here are a few tips to help you protect yourself and know what to expect from us:

• Apply only through our official channels. All open roles are listed on our official careers page: careers.cookunity.com
• Our recruiters are real people — and easy to verify. You can always find them on LinkedIn with verified profiles. If you’re unsure, feel free to reach out to us on our official LinkedIn Company Page
• We only communicate through official CookUnity channels. That means emails ending in @cookunity.com and interviews held through official company platforms (Google Meet or Zoom) — never WhatsApp, Telegram, or SMS.
• We’ll never ask for payment or personal financial details. If anyone does, please don’t share any information and let us know right away.

If something ever feels off or you’re unsure about a message, we’d much rather you double-check with us. You can always contact us directly through any of our social media channels. We appreciate your interest in joining CookUnity — and we care about keeping your experience (and safety) as genuine as possible.