Sr Brand Designer - Brand Foundations
Job description
Building the Future of Open Finance
Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.
Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our culture page to understand what drives us and how we work.
The team
Payward is building the financial infrastructure on cryptorails that enables people to own the power of their money. Millions of people across 100+ countries encounter that mission through our brands including Kraken, Krak, NinjaTrader, Breakout and many more.
The Brand Foundations team makes all of it coherent: the brand guidelines, brand architecture, AI-native brand ops, templates, assets, and systems that every product pod draws from.
This role sits at the center of that. You're the standard-setter. The person who makes it easier for every pod to ship great brand work by giving them better tools, clearer guidance, and a higher bar to aim for.
The opportunity
Own and evolve the core brand system: brand guidelines, component libraries, templates, and asset libraries that product pods rely on every day.
Raise brand quality across pods. Not by policing, but by showing the way. You build the resources and create the conditions for others to do their best brand work.
Develop and maintain visual identity standards across Payward's portfolio of brands, keeping them coherent as products grow and evolve.
Define and document how our brand should behave across emerging surfaces, AI generated outputs, motion and new product categories. Before ambiguity becomes inconsistency.
Collaborate with pod designers, marketers, and product partners to understand where the system is breaking down and fix it at the root, not the symptom.
Translate complex concepts i.e. crypto rails, onchain finance, institutional trading; into clear, usable brand guidance that non-brand specialists can apply with confidence.
Lead design reviews with a constructive, generative approach: your feedback opens doors, it doesn't close them.
Stay ahead of how design tools (including AI) are changing creative practice, and shape how Payward's brand system adapts.
What you bring
Deep experience as a brand designer in agency, in-house, or both. With a track record of building and evolving systems, not just executing within them.
Systems thinking as a default mode. You see patterns, spot structural problems, and solve for the whole rather than the instance.
Strong experience with motion or working alongside motion designers; comfort with the full range of digital brand touchpoints.
Brand identity expertise: you understand how visual systems create meaning, trust, and recognition at scale.
Strategic affinity — you're comfortable working upstream of execution, helping define what the brand should stand for before anyone opens Figma.
A strong communicator who can articulate brand decisions clearly to designers, PMs, marketers, and leadership alike.
A portfolio showing not just craft, but judgment: clear visual systems, coherent brand thinking, and evidence that your work made others' work better.
Mastery of Figma and Adobe Creative Suite; fluency with how design tooling, including AI, is reshaping brand practice.
Genuine curiosity about crypto, technology, and what financial ownership means for individuals around the world.
Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.
Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.
We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Our commitment
Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.
We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.
As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.