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Brand & Motion Designer

Denver, CO - Hybrid; New York, New York, United States; San Francisco, CA - Hybrid

 

About Gusto

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve.

 
All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

 
AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.

About the Opportunity

Brand design is how Gusto earns trust, builds recognition and insight, and makes people feel something before they ever read a word. Our Brand is about how we show up in every moment and this team owns some of its most important attributes from how we use language to typography, from color and composition to illustration, motion.These aren't finishing touches. They're critical to how we  show who we are and why we're different.

Gusto is expanding our in-house creative studio inside a fast-moving, late-stage startup. We launch products, educate customers, run brand campaigns, and show up at events—and we do all of it with a consistent visual language and voice that needs to work across digital channels, motion formats, physical environments and everything in between. In the same week, you might be designing the visual system for a product launch and art directing an illustration library that will scale across the entire brand.

We're looking for a Brand & Motion Designer who is a hands-on maker: someone who loves the craft of visual design and motion, takes real ownership of creative output, and wants to help define how Gusto looks, feels, and moves across our brand. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on brand craft, motion design systems, and the variety of deeply considered visual work that makes a B2B brand feel genuinely human.

In this role, you'll own creative work from early concept through final delivery. You'll make judgment calls about typography, composition, color, and motion, and increasingly, that judgment extends to the AI-assisted work happening around you. You'll know when a generated output is right for the brand and when it isn't, and you'll be able to say why. You'll help introduce motion as a foundational part of how we build brand as someone who thinks in motion and ensures it's part of the creative process from the start.

AI is part of how this team works. We use it to advance faster, explore more territory, and reduce the distance between a concept and something real. What we're looking for isn't just someone who uses these tools but someone who can direct them. Someone who sets the creative standard for what AI output is and isn't acceptable for the Gusto brand, and who helps us build the guardrails and workflows that let the whole team produce at a higher level.

If you're energized by being close to the work, care deeply about craft & preference, and enjoy improving both the output and the process, this role will be a impressive fit.

Here's what you'll do day-to-day

  • Design and execute visual and motion work across product launches, product education, brand campaigns, events, and digital channels
  • Design and evolve brand systems, including motion guidelines, templates, and guardrails, that help the broader organization produce on-brand work consistently
  • Integrate motion into the brand design process, establishing principles and patterns for animation that extend our visual identity into dynamic and digital formats
  • Direct and evaluate AI-generated creative work, setting the standard for what's on-brand, what needs to be pushed further, and what shouldn't ship
  • Use AI tools to compress the distance between concept and execution, exploring more territory, iterating faster, and raising the quality bar on every deliverable
  • Partner closely with other creatives and cross-functional partners across marketing, product, and growth from early concept through final delivery
  • Build repeatable templates and workflows that enable faster turnaround without sacrificing quality
  • Maintain brand integrity across a wide range of deliverables — including work where AI tools played a role in production — ensuring everything feels cohesive, human, and unmistakably Gusto

Here's what we're looking for

  • 6+ years of experience in brand design, visual design and motion for in-house studios, agencies, or content teams
  • A portfolio that demonstrates robust design skills and creative thinking is required. It should include brand identity, product marketing, campaigns, and digital content. Please provide examples that explain how AI was part of your work and the decisions you made.
  • Robust design instincts across typography, color, composition, and motion direction—you know what makes work feel distinctive versus generic
  • Expert proficiency in motion design principles and tools—Figma and Adobe Creative Cloud and motion tools like Calvary, Rive and Lottie
  • A demonstrated point of view on AI in creative work — how to direct it, when to override it, and what it means to maintain a high creative standard when AI tools are part of the process
  • Comfort migrating between big, brand-defining work and fast-turn executional needs
  • Proficient collaboration skills across creative, production, marketing, and product partners
  • A maker mindset—you enjoy improving how work gets made, not just making the work itself
  • Experience developing or contributing to creative standards for AI-assisted production — guardrails, evaluation criteria, or workflows that help a team produce at a higher level with these tools.

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 $146,000/yr to $183,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $177,000/yr to $222,000/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.

Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale.

Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas. 

When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto. 

Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.

Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.

Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.

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