Group Creative Director, Copy

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 400,000 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 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

Words shape how people feel about a brand. Voice, tone, and narrative aren't finishing touches—they're the work. They're how we earn trust, convey clarity, and make people feel something real.

Gusto is expanding our in-house creative studio inside our fast-moving, late-stage startup. We develop brand campaigns, integrated marketing, and awareness efforts that deepen emotional connection with our audience—and we partner closely with strategy, marketing, and design teams to bring those stories to life across every channel. It's common to move between a polished brand platform and fast-turn campaign copy in the same week. AI has changed how we think about creative scale — we use it to accelerate exploration, stress-test brand voice, and build systems that let partners produce on-brand work without a director in the room.

We're looking for a Group Creative Director, Copy who is a hands-on maker and conceptual leader: someone who loves developing big ideas, crafting compelling narratives, and shaping how a brand talks across every touchpoint. And AI is important, so the person in this role needs to be confident shaping how AI-assisted creative work gets reviewed, directed, and held to a high standard. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on campaign conceptualizing, brand voice, and multi-channel storytelling—working in close partnership with a fellow Creative Director to lead all campaign work.

In this role, you'll own the narrative direction for brand campaigns from brief through execution. You'll make judgment calls about concept, tone, structure, and emotional resonance across TV, digital, social, OOH, and experiential. You'll collaborate closely with brand strategy, marketing, design, and cross-functional partners to define what great looks like — and hold that bar even when AI is doing the drafting. And you'll help raise the standard on creative quality not just through feedback, but through the systems that make quality repeatable: voice guidelines, prompt libraries, AI review workflows, and messaging frameworks that let the whole team — writers, freelancers, and agency partners — produce on-brand work without a director in the room every time.

If you're energized by big ideas, care deeply about language, and want to define how a brand shows up in the world, this role will be an excellent fit.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day

• Concept and lead the creative direction for brand campaigns, integrated marketing, and awareness efforts across TV, digital, social, OOH, and experiential — setting the standard for what great looks like whether the draft starts with a human or an AI.
• Develop and evolve brand voice guidelines, messaging frameworks, and tone-of-voice standards, including the prompt libraries and AI review workflows that make those standards usable at scale.
• Write and direct campaign copy—from manifestos and scripts to headlines, social, and long-form narratives—and evaluate AI-assisted drafts with the same editorial rigor as anything written from scratch.
• Partner with a fellow Creative Director to ensure conceptual cohesion across copy and visual for all campaign work.
• Collaborate with brand strategy, marketing, product marketing, and cross-functional teams from brief through launch.
• Provide incisive creative feedback to junior writers, freelance partners, and agency collaborators—including clear direction on when and how to use AI in their workflows, and where human judgment is non-negotiable.
• Translate complex or technical subject matter into simple, human, compelling narratives,  including in contexts where AI has produced a first draft that needs significant editorial lift.
• Adapt brand voice and campaign narratives across channels and audiences without losing the thread,  using AI to accelerate that adaptation while maintaining the consistency that only a senior creative director can enforce.

Here’s what we’re looking for

• 12+ years of experience in copywriting, creative direction, or brand storytelling within agencies, in-house creative teams, or a combination— including experience leading creative work in an environment where AI tools are part of the daily workflow.
• Proven track record concepting and leading integrated brand campaigns across TV, digital, social, OOH, and experiential.
• Deep expertise in brand voice development, messaging architecture, and multi-channel narrative strategy, including building systems — prompt libraries, review frameworks, guidelines — that make brand voice scalable across human and AI-assisted output.
• A portfolio that demonstrates big-idea thinking, range across formats, and the ability to connect brand strategy to cultural relevance — including examples of work where you've directed, elevated, or made the call to override AI-assisted drafts.
• Experience directing freelance writers, agencies, and production partners while maintaining creative consistency, including setting clear expectations about where and how AI fits into their workflows.
• Sharp instincts for tone, pacing, structure, and emotional resonance across long-form and short-form copy — and a demonstrated ability to apply that editorial judgment to AI-generated work, not just work written from scratch.
• Comfort operating in fast-moving environments where priorities evolve and collaboration is constant.
• Ability to translate complex or technical subject matter into simple, human, compelling narratives.
• Strong collaboration skills across strategy, creative, marketing, and cross-functional partners.
• Experience using AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Jasper) to scale creative quality—building brand voice systems, AI-assisted review workflows, and messaging frameworks that empower others to produce on-brand work. A strategic point of view on how AI changes creative leadership and where human editorial judgment remains non-negotiable.
• A maker mindset—you love the work itself, not just directing it.

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 $204,000/yr to $238,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $240,000/yr to $280,000/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.

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