Director of Brand & Product Design

Job description

**Location:** US or Canada **Type:** US Applicants - Full-Time; Canadian Applicants - Independent Contractor ## **\*\*A note before you read further\*\*** The world is changing fast, and so is this role. We can't fully tell you what this job looks like in six months. That's true of every role at Human Agency right now. What we need from you, no matter what: accountability, curiosity, and a builder-first mindset. If that sounds exciting, keep reading. If it sounds intimidating but you're still interested, let's talk. If none of that sounds like you, that's okay. This probably isn't your spot. ## About Human Agency We're scaling rapidly and have a growing pipeline of opportunities that demand exceptional talent across disciplines. Our mission is to bring on individuals, from creative producers to technical experts to entrepreneurial leaders, who can help us realize this next chapter of growth. We are a company of doers. Leaders roll up their sleeves, teams work flat, and everyone contributes to what ships. Titles don't insulate us from feedback or basics. We invite critique, learn quickly, and keep raising the bar. The best ideas win here, no matter where they come from, because clients trust us to deliver the strongest outcomes every time. Our clients' missions, products, and bottom lines are sacred. We immerse ourselves in their world, becoming stewards of their goals and partners in solving big problems. Every product, strategy, or asset we create must be both beautiful and functional; practical, usable, and designed for real-world impact. Humans are our most valuable resource, and we only grow by hiring people who push us forward. Across strategy, engineering, design, data, and operations, we seek out teammates who raise the bar and make us better. Always hire up, never down. We partner with organizations of all sizes to explore, design, and implement AI strategies that are secure, scalable, and human-centered. We believe AI should amplify human potential, not replace it, and we build with that conviction in every engagement. From advisory and tooling to implementation and education, we meet clients where they are and help them integrate AI in ways that align with their mission and values. Our goal is to empower teams to work smarter, move faster, and unlock new possibilities through thoughtful, responsible innovation. And through it all, we lead with purpose, love, and adventure. We do meaningful work with people we care about, and we make the ride an adventure worth taking. Because at Human Agency, who we are and how we work are one and the same. ## The Opportunity Most designers have a lane. Brand people make things look right. Product people make things work right. Systems people make things scale right. You refuse to pick, and that refusal is exactly what we're after. We work with clients ranging from early-stage ventures to established organizations, all navigating a pivotal moment in how AI is reshaping their products and brands. They need design that holds up at the identity level and at the component level, and they need it from someone who can move fast while also adhering to critical details no one else would think to notice. This role exists because our clients' design needs don't stop at a logo or a Figma file. They need visual systems that a developer can build from, a brand team can extend, and an AI tool can interpret. You'll be the person who owns that full arc, from first-pass brand exploration through the token naming convention that makes the system actually usable, and you'll do it across multiple client engagements at once. You've also already reckoned with what AI means for how design gets made. You're not experimenting with it cautiously; you've rebuilt your workflow around it because the old one stopped making sense. That's the standard here, and it's one we're going to keep raising. ## What You'll Own - **Brand Identity & Visual Direction** — Lead brand identity work for clients from concept through final delivery, making and defending decisions about typography, color, motion, and voice with the confidence of someone who's done it before and knows why it works. - **Design Systems Architecture** — Build design systems from the ground up (components, documentation, governance), not extend someone else's library. Your systems should be usable by engineers, legible to AI tooling, and maintainable by teams that outlast the engagement. - **Web & Product Design** — Own end-to-end design for web and product experiences, from information architecture and interaction patterns through final specs, with enough craft in the details that clients are delighted on the first round. - **AI-Augmented Workflow** — Use AI tools actively across exploration, iteration, and systemization to move faster and produce more considered work, and share what you're learning with the team so we all get better. - **Client Collaboration** — Present and defend design decisions directly to client stakeholders, translating the reasoning behind visual and systems choices into terms that land with non-designers without dumbing anything down. - **Cross-Functional Handoff** — Work closely with engineers, strategists, and AI practitioners to ensure design outputs are implementable, appropriately scoped, and set the people coming after you up to succeed. ## Who You Are ### Experience & Skills - 6+ years of design experience with meaningful work on both brand identity and digital product, not one with a footnote of the other. - A portfolio that includes at least one design system you built from scratch, starting from a brand identity rather than inheriting an existing component library. - Demonstrable fluency in Figma, including variables, auto layout, and component architecture at a level that would impress an engineer who's seen bad handoffs before. - A real track record of shipping brand identities and web experiences for clients or products people actually use, not just speculative or academic work. - Current, working knowledge of AI tools applied to design workflows (generative image tools, LLM-assisted copy exploration, prototyping acceleration, or comparable) used in a way that's changed how you actually work, not just how you talk about working. - Strong enough grasp of front-end constraints (HTML, CSS, design tokens, component-based development) to design systems that developers want to build from. - Experience working in a consultancy, agency, or multi-client environment where you've had to context-switch across industries and brand voices without losing rigor. ### Mindset & Traits - You'd rather build the thing than write the deck about why the thing should be built. - You're not precious about methodology or tools, but you care about outcomes, and you update your approach when something stops working. - You can hold a high aesthetic bar and a high functional bar at the same time without treating them as competing priorities. - You take feedback without flinching and give it without softening it into uselessness. - You're comfortable with ambiguity at the start of a project and disciplined enough to create clarity by the end of it. You want to be somewhere that rewards moving fast and building well, and you're put off by places that side-eye either one. ## Logistics - Remote-first position open to candidates based in the United States or Canada. - This one's Eastern time zone; we need real-time overlap with the team. - Contract-to-hire preferred. - Some travel may be required for client engagements or team gatherings. ## Equal Opportunity Commitment Human Agency is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diverse perspectives and are committed to building inclusive, high-performing teams where everyone can do their best work.