Visual Designer

Tonic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Tonic is seeking a senior designer to shape the product and brand visuals across the app, web, and campaigns. You will own surfaces from practice tools to the shared lesson landing page, translating sound and interaction into a cohesive interface.

You will lead design direction with the founders, grow a scalable design system, ensure consistent brand presence, and mentor teammates. Bonus if you still play an instrument.

Qualifications

• 5+ years designing digital products and shipping speed across product UI and brand.
• Set visual direction somewhere real and held it as the company grew.
• Systems thinking with strong taste; able to set the bar.
• Uses modern AI tools as a force multiplier without compromising craft.
• Bonus: you play an instrument, or wish you still did.

Responsibilities

• Own new surfaces end to end, from practice tools to the shared lesson landing page.
• Set and maintain a coherent visual language across app, site, and campaigns.
• Grow a design system that makes new surfaces cheaper to build and visually consistent.
• Lead visual decisions and set standards across the company.

Skills

Product UI design

Brand design

Design systems

Leadership

AI tools proficiency

Job description

Intelligence for music learning. Tonic Notes records the music lesson and turns it into a summary, a practice plan built around the student, and audio clips of every passage worked on. It's the only music-first AI notetaker: fluent in playing, not just speech. Because the most important moments cannot be captured in words.

The role

Music hands a designer unusually rich material: sound, notation, practice, performance, the relationship between a teacher and a student. You'll decide how all of it looks and feels, everywhere Tonic appears: the app, the web, the brand, the campaigns, the moments partners put their names next to.

This is a senior role with founding-team scope. You'll set the visual bar and build the system that holds it, make the calls that become the company's taste, and work directly with the founders. The category is weeks old and its visual language is unclaimed. You claim it.

Shape the product

• Own new surfaces end to end, from the practice tools students live in to the page a shared lesson lands on (which is also where many people meet Tonic first)
• Solve the central design problem: a lesson is an hour of sound and feeling, and you decide what it looks like when it becomes an object on a screen

Build the brand

• Carry one identity across the site, campaigns, and artist and institution moments, and keep it whole under pressure
• Art-direct the assets teachers and collaborators put their reputations next to

Set the system

• Grow a design system that makes each new surface cheaper to build and impossible to make ugly
• Raise the bar for everyone: critique, standards, and the taste calls nobody else can make

The first six months

• Core product surfaces share one coherent visual language
• A design system in place that makes new surfaces faster to build
• Brand consistent across the site, campaigns, and partner moments
• Leading visual decisions across the company: critique, standards, direction

Who thrives here

• 5+ years designing digital products, with a portfolio showing range at shipping speed: product UI and brand, sketch to screen
• Has set visual direction somewhere real and held it as the company grew
• Systems thinking; stronger taste. Comfortable being the bar
• Uses modern AI tools as a force multiplier without letting them flatten the work
• Bonus: you play an instrument, or wish you still did

The team

We're a lean team of experienced engineers, music experts, and lifelong learners, with a track record of building products loved by billions of people around the world. Proud alumni of Google, YouTube, Disney, Twitter, and of Princeton, Penn, Carnegie Mellon. We work together with an uncanny efficiency. We play together with a whole lot of joy.