Junior Designer / Production Artist

About the role

Pulse Trading Cards is seeking a Junior Designer / Production Artist to join their team. The role is primarily focused on building, preparing, and production-managing trading card product files.

Responsibilities

• Build and prepare production files for trading card products, including base cards, inserts, autograph cards, parallels, checklists, packaging, retail displays, sell sheets, and supporting print collateral.
• Work within established card templates and product systems to create accurate card layouts across athletes, teams, partners, variants, SKUs, and release formats.
• Prepare print-ready files with precision, including bleeds, trim, safe zones, dielines, spot colors, foils, finishes, coatings, overprint settings, export specs, and vendor requirements.
• Execute high-volume production tasks such as copy swaps, image placement, layout updates, card backs, versioning, resizing, checklist updates, and print file exports.
• Process and retouch photography for card and packaging use, including color correction, cleanup, cutouts, masking, compositing basics, background removal, and preparing images to spec.
• Package and organize working files, links, fonts, specs, references, proofs, and final exports so projects stay clean, searchable, and production-ready.
• Review files for quality and accuracy before handoff, checking for common print and production issues before they reach vendors.
• Support proofing rounds, spec checks, revision updates, and production handoff with print vendors as needed.
• Create occasional supporting marketing or digital assets from approved templates when connected to a product release, such as web graphics, email images, social graphics, or launch materials.

Requirements

• 2-3+ years of design and production experience with a portfolio that shows strong print, layout, production, or packaging-related work.
• Strong proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite, especially Illustrator and Photoshop.
• A solid understanding of print production fundamentals, including CMYK workflows, resolution, bleeds, trim, safe zones, dielines, spot colors, proofing, prepress, and vendor handoff.
• Experience preparing files for specialty print finishes, including foil, spot UV, embossing, debossing, die cuts, specialty stocks, laminates, coatings, and other production treatments.
• A strong attention to detail and a careful eye for alignment, spacing, typography, image quality, file setup, and production accuracy.
• Clean file hygiene, including clean layers, consistent naming, organized links, packaged files, version control, and accurate exports.
• Comfort working within established templates, design systems, and production guidelines while keeping quality high and turnaround efficient.
• Photo-editing fundamentals, including retouching, masking, cutouts, cleanup, compositing basics, and preparing images for print.
• Ability to manage repetitive, detail-heavy production work without losing accuracy or consistency.
• A collaborative mindset and willingness to take direction, ask good questions, and help keep projects moving smoothly.

Qualifications

• Bonus points for experience with trading cards, collectibles, packaging, sports products, entertainment products, consumer goods, or retail print production.
• A deep understanding and interest in frontier AI models/agents, and how to apply them to increase workflow consistency and efficiency.
• A strong understanding of sports, trading card culture, collector behavior, inserts, parallels, autographs, packaging, and the small details collectors notice.
• Motion, video, or 3D skills, including After Effects, Premiere, Blender, Cinema 4D, or similar tools.

Benefits

Competitive salary
Dental insurance
Flexible schedule
Free food & snacks
Health insurance
Opportunity for advancement
Paid time off
Training & development
Vision insurance

Pay

$50,000 - $65,000 per year

Schedule

This is a remote position.