Associate Creative Director, Brand & Design

About the role

Vast is looking for an Associate Creative Director, Brand & Design, reporting to the Senior Director, Brand Design, to help build and protect the creative standard for how Vast shows up in the world. You'll be in the work every day: designing, art directing, and solving creative problems directly, while giving clear direction to a small team and mentoring the people on it. You help shape the creative direction for key brand moments, then roll up your sleeves to make the work great. This is a full-time, exempt position located in our Long Beach location.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve Vast's brand design standards, and make sure the work coming out of the team meets them every day, not just at major launches
• Manage a team of designers day-to-day: give feedback in real time, run reviews, and set clear direction on what good looks like
• Jump into the work yourself, sketching, editing, designing, when that's the fastest way to get something over the bar
• Lead creative work from concept through final execution across brand initiatives, campaigns, and key company moments
• Translate business goals and technical complexity into creative direction the team can actually run with
• Partner with marketing, comms, product, engineering, and business teams to spot where design can move the needle, and follow through on it
• Mentor designers on craft and judgment, not just process, help them get better at knowing what to cut
• Present creative direction to stakeholders, and hold the line on quality when there's pressure to compromise
• Keep a real pulse on how AI is changing design and production workflows, and bring that into how the team actually works

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience
• 8+ years of experience in brand, design, art direction, or a related creative discipline (e.g., brand design, digital design, visual communications, integrated marketing), with a proven track record of producing high-quality work yourself
• A strong portfolio that demonstrates hands-on craft across multiple channels and audiences, with a clear pull toward innovative, simple, and technically-minded work
• Experience working in a fast-paced environment, and genuinely enjoying the pace, volume, and ambiguity that come with it
• Experience managing a small design team: giving clear creative direction while staying deeply hands-on in the work itself
• A natural people mentor who develops direct reports and helps them grow their craft and confidence
• Experience translating business objectives, audience insights, and complex concepts into clear, executable creative
• Experience partnering with cross-functional teams including marketing, communications, product, engineering, operations, and leadership
• Ability to travel up to 10% of the time
• Willingness to work overtime, or weekends to support critical mission milestones

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience building brand in aerospace, technology, science, or another category where the product is genuinely hard to explain
• Comfortable across brand design standards, design for print, ads, social, events, partnerships, mission graphics, facilities and wayfinding
• Experience translating highly technical, hard-to-explain products into stories that land with a broader audience without losing credibility with a technical one
• Experience managing external creative partners and production resources
• Comfortable in the room with engineers and executives, able to hold a point of view under pressure and get people aligned without watering down the work

Pay

California: $151,000—$256,000 USD

Benefits

• Company equity
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents
• Generous paid time off: up to 20+ days of vacation for exempt staff and up to 10+ days for non-exempt staff, with the ability to cash-out unused vacation annually
• Paid parental leave
• Short and long-term disability insurance
• Life insurance
• Access to a 401(k) retirement plan
• ClassPass credits
• Personalized mental healthcare through Spring Health
• Other discounts and perks
• Exceptional food perks: snacks, drip coffee & onsite barista, cold drinks, and dinner meals free of charge; lunch subsidized