Job Description

Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of full-service payroll, Gusto offers health insurance, 401(k)s, expert HR, and team management tools. Today, Gusto offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York serve more than 400,000 businesses nationwide.

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That’s why we’re committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy .

Role Overview:

We’re looking for an exceptional, hands-on Creative Director to bring our brand to life through high-quality, visually compelling creative work. As part of our in-house Brand Studio, you will be responsible for translating brand vision into powerful, consistent, and beautifully crafted visuals across all mediums, including advertising, digital, print, events, and product marketing.

This is an individual contributor role for someone who thrives in the craft of design, pushing creative boundaries while ensuring brand consistency. You’ll be deeply involved in the day-to-day execution of design work, working closely with designers, producers, web teams, and even event teams to maintain a cohesive and elevated brand aesthetic

As a mature, late-stage startup, we’re looking for a creative director who can lead by doing—someone with exceptional taste, a sharp eye for detail, and the ability to guide designers in executing best-in-class creative work. If you’re passionate about composition, typography, imagery, and visual storytelling, and love crafting brand-defining creative work, we’d love to meet you.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities:

• Define the Visual Identity: Ensure a strong, cohesive, and recognizable brand presence across all creative outputs.
• Craft Beautiful Brand Moments: Design beautiful and purposeful websites, landing pages and interactive digital assets for campaigns that showcase the best of our brand.
• Provide Creative Direction and Hands-On Design Leadership: Offer insightful, constructive feedback to designers to ensure every piece of creative work meets the highest standards of quality and to elevate elements like composition, typography and imagery to ensure pixel-perfect execution.
• Champion Craft & Execution: Push the team to think beyond the obvious and execute at a world-class level, refining work through iteration and thoughtful critique.
• Maintain Brand Consistency: Develop and enforce brand guidelines that align with our evolving brand strategy.
• Evolve Visual Language: Identify opportunities to refine and expand our visual system, ensuring the brand remains fresh, modern, and impactful.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with producers, web designers, event teams, and marketing to align aesthetics across all platforms and campaigns.
• Stay Ahead of Trends: Keep up with design, photography, illustration, and motion trends to inspire fresh ideas and push creative boundaries.

Experience Required:

• 8+ years of experience in visual design, brand design, or art direction, preferably in in-house creative teams, agencies, or high-growth startups.
• Expert-level craft in composition, typography, color, and layout—you have an eye for what makes design truly exceptional.
• Strong portfolio showcasing world-class brand design, advertising, and visual storytelling across multiple platforms.
• Experience creating and evolving visual identity systems, ensuring consistency and quality across a brand’s touchpoints.
• Ability to provide clear, actionable feedback and guide designers toward better execution.
• Highly collaborative mindset—comfortable working with designers, marketers, producers, writers, and cross-functional teams.
• Hands-on approach—excited to dive into projects and refine execution alongside the team.
• Adaptability and resilience—able to work in a fast-paced, ever-changing startup environment while delivering exceptional creative work.

Nice-to-Haves:

• Experience with photo direction, illustration, or motion graphics.
• Background in advertising or editorial design.
• Knowledge of web design principles and UI/UX best practices.
• Experience with AI-driven design tools or emerging creative technologies.

This is a rare opportunity to own and evolve a brand’s visual identity, creating memorable, high-impact creative work that drives business and brand success. If you’re a creative director who leads by doing, cares deeply about craft, and loves bringing brands to life visually, we’d love to hear from you!

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 $172,000/yr to $215,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $202,000/yr to $253,000/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.

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.

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Enter manually

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Preferred Name *

Zip Code / Postal Code (Non-U.S. based candidates, please enter 00000) *

LinkedIn Profile

How did you hear about this opportunity? (select all that apply) *

LinkedIn

Indeed

Facebook

News Article

Conference or Meetup

Company Blog

Company Employee

Company Website

Are you legally authorized to work in the country where you are applying? * Select...

Will you now or in the future require visa sponsorship for employment? * Select...

If you’ll require this employer to commence, i.e., “sponsor,” an immigration or work permit case in order to employ you, either now or at some point in the future, then you should answer yes. An example of an immigration or work permit case that may require sponsorship now or in the future would be an H-1B or other employment-based work permit sponsorship.

Voluntary Self-Identification

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it helps us to build better products, better serve our customers, and makes our company stronger.

In addition to the information required to consider your application, below is a set of demographic questions that help us identify areas for improvement in our process and further support the development and execution of our diversity efforts and programs as well as to create a more inclusive environment for all employees.

Your responses to these questions will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file. Your responses, or your wish not to answer, will not be associated with your specific application, will not be shared with hiring managers, and will not in any way be used in making any employment decisions, including hiring decisions.

Please use this as a reference while completing the disability self-identification:

You are considered to have a disability if you have a physical or mental impairment or medical condition that substantially limits a major life activity, or if you have a history or record of such an impairment or medical condition. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

• Blindness
• Deafness
• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Epilepsy
• Autism
• Cerebral palsy
• HIV/AIDS
• Bipolar d]]>

Job Tags

Similar Jobs