Narrative and Brand Lead (Staff/Director)

Job description

ABOUT THE COMPANY Valon is building the AI-native operating system for regulated finance, starting with mortgage servicing. We're a Series C company backed by a16z, transforming industries that others have written off as too complex to innovate. Rather than build on top of broken legacy systems, we took a different approach: we built and operate our own mortgage servicing business managing $110+ billion in loans. This wasn't the end goal, it was how we deeply understood the complexity needed to build software that actually works in regulated industries. The results speak for themselves. We've transformed mortgage servicing from a 0% margin business into 60%+ margins while dramatically improving customer experience. Major enterprise contracts are now deploying across the industry. ValonOS is our unified platform that makes every process structured and programmable and it is perfectly positioned for the AI era. When everything flows through one system with rich data, AI agents don't just automate tasks, they continuously improve entire operations. Mortgage servicing is just the beginning of our vision to transform regulated industries and beyond. ABOUT THE ROLE Make the best builders in America understand that Valon is one of the most interesting places to work, and feel proud if they get in. For six years, we built and ran our own mortgage servicer, proving that AI-native infrastructure could hold up in one of the country's most regulated, unforgiving environments, where getting it wrong has real consequences for real families. It held up. We turned a 0%-margin business into 60%+ margins while making it easier for families to pay their mortgages. In May 2026 we sold the servicer, and now we license the OS behind it. That's the short version of a good story. Almost no one knows it yet. We're hiring someone to fix that. You'll own Valon's external brand, starting with talent: how the company comes across to the engineers, operators, designers, and other builders we most want to hire. The job is equal parts strategy and writing, plus the judgment that connects them. You figure out what Valon's story should be and who it's for, decide what's worth saying, then say it well in whatever medium fits. This isn't employer branding in the usual sense. There's no template and no agency to manage. You'll function as a high-impact IC https://www.elenaverna.com/p/ic-work-is-the-new-career-flex running a small newsroom inside the company. You find the real stories, tell them so a person actually wants to read them, the place where they’re most likely to engage, and build a repeatable way to keep doing it. Stripe made payments infrastructure feel like a generational mission. Anduril made a space engineers were avoiding feel like the most important work around. Valon's story is that big, and it's sitting there almost entirely untold. You'd be the first person to tell it properly. WHY BRAND-BUILDING HERE IS THE MOST INTERESTING PROBLEM YOU'VE (PROBABLY) NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT Most communicators are torn between telling the mission story that attracts talent and investors and a more clinical marketing message for customers. We already know how to reach our customers, which means you get to focus solely on the talent brand (at least to start). You're writing for people making an identity decision, not a business transaction. The engineers are deciding what story they want to tell about this chapter of their life. And while we're biased, we think the raw material here is pretty great. We've already built and outgrown one successful business (our mortgage servicer), and now we're taking on new industries. It's a substantive story, not a hype-y one (we're allergic to hype), and it's your job to convey the seriousness of our engineering story - building compliant, zero-downtime financial infrastructure - with heart, humor, and an allergy to spin. WHAT YOU'LL DO SHAPE THE STORY Work out how to explain Valon clearly: what we're building, why it's hard, and why a strong candidate should care. Then build the material the rest of the company can reuse, including messaging for candidates and outside audiences, the specific stories and numbers that back it up, and clear answers to why people join. WRITE THE CONTENT Get Valon in front of the people who form opinions about where to work: - Founder essays and posts, in the founders' voice - Company updates and longer memos - "Why I joined" and team stories - Product and technical stories written for a wider audience - Candidate-facing material that explains the company and the work The skill is finding the best material already inside the company and writing it up so it reads like a person wrote it, not a press release. GET OTHER PEOPLE TALKING Owned content only goes so far. You should know the writers, podcasters, and newsletter authors who would find Valon genuinely interesting, build real relationships with them as humans, and pitch in a way that earns coverage rather than begs for it. The pitch is never "come cover our company." It's "here's an interesting thing happening in the world, and we're the best people to explain it." HELP RECRUITING CLOSE Give recruiting sharper tools to tell the story, especially late in the process when someone is deciding whether to take an offer. That means a better "Why Valon" deck, candidate FAQs and offer-stage materials, pitch materials for specific roles, and straight answers to the doubts candidates actually raise. You'll learn what excites candidates, where they hesitate, and what gets them to yes. DECIDE WHAT'S WORTH SHARING A lot happens inside Valon, and part of the job is judgment about which of it the outside world should see, and in what form. You'll spot the moments, people, and proof points worth writing about, decide whether something is a founder post, a candidate asset, or a longer piece, and protect the signal. Not everything needs to be published. BUILD A SYSTEM THAT LASTS We don't want the occasional good post. We want a repeatable way to find and tell stories: pulling ideas out of founders and teams, interviewing people and catching good stories early, turning milestones into something worth reading, publishing on a regular cadence without heavy process, and tracking what's actually moving candidates. WHO YOU ARE You're a strong writer with good taste and sharp judgment. You're probably a fit if: - You're constitutionally incapable of letting a good story go untold. When something happens, you're already drafting it in your head and thinking about who needs to read it. - You understand that a career decision is an identity decision, and you write to that. - You're genuinely moved by what Valon is doing: a small, serious team rebuilding the financial infrastructure the American dream depends on. If that lands flat, this isn't the right fit. - You can write in someone else's voice and make it sound like them. - You work across mediums yourself, and you can make complicated things clear without making them simplistic. - You've been the primary or founding brand or editorial voice somewhere, and you can point to results. Engineers shared your work. Candidates applied because of it. - You're writing the playbook, not executing one. There's no template for this. Stripe figured it out their way. Anduril figured out theirs. We'll figure out ours, and you're the one figuring it out. - You measure the right things. Offer accept rates and pipeline, not reach and impressions. You might come from brand or content at a consumer company that got identity right, from journalism or entertainment, from founder communications, or from a writing-heavy operator role. The background matters less than whether you can find the real story and make people care. WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT - An agency or consulting seat with no real in-house ownership. - A chase for viral moments. We're playing a long game, and this person needs to believe in that. - A job for someone who needs to be out front. Much of the best work here goes uncredited. - A brand strategist who "manages vendors" and hands the actual writing to someone else. LEVEL & COMPENSATION Staff IC to Director, probably 6 to 10 years in, and someone who has been the primary or founding voice somewhere rather than one writer on a large team. Comp is likely $200–260K, with room to adjust for the right person. LOCATION This role is based in New York City. We use in-person time as a tool for speed, trust, and building a shared sense of what Valon's story is, which matters even more for a role this close to the founders and the rest of the company. Expect to be in the NYC office regularly. We don't manage this with rigid attendance rules; we trust you to use judgment about where the work gets done best, and to show up in person for the work that needs it. Throughout the interview process, please remember that emails will only be from valon.com http://valon.com email addresses. We will never ask for any personally identifiable information during the interview process itself. Please reach out to talent@valon.com if you have any requests to verify the authenticity of an outreach. Valon is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws. Valon makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.