Creative Director

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 role is an Individual Contributor, meaning you'll be driving creative strategy and executing on the work, but will not be directly managing team members. We're looking for someone who can lead by example and mentors others, but whose focus is on the work itself.

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. 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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