Sr. Brand Design Manager, Visual Systems

This senior design leadership role leads the development and governance of the organization’s visual identity and design systems, translating brand strategy into practical visual principles, templates, and standards to improve cohesion and scalability across marketing channels.

Responsibilities

• Refine and maintain the visual identity across campaigns, social media, email, print, presentations, trade shows, product collateral, photography, and digital touchpoints.
• Translate brand strategy into clear visual principles, covering typography, layout, color usage, imagery, hierarchy, iconography, and the overall design philosophy.
• Collaborate on the next iteration of the brand guide, expanding beyond logos and colors into a functional visual system.
• Create and refine templates for recurring needs such as decks, social assets, email headers, campaign materials, brochures, product sheets, event collateral, and internal communications.
• Guide and review in-house design work to ensure strong visual hierarchy, clarity, polish, and brand consistency.
• Provide clear creative feedback and serve as a primary reviewer for major brand and marketing assets.
• Organize existing templates and assets, identify outdated or inconsistent materials, and support cleaner file systems, approved exemplars, and version control.
• Partner with project and operations leads to improve creative intake, review, and delivery workflows.
• Work closely with Marketing, Product Marketing, Scientific Communications, Social Media, Commercial, Creative, and Web/UX teams to ensure a consistent expression of the visual identity across channels.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in brand design, visual identity, graphic design, art direction, or creative systems.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating solid design judgment, typography, layout, visual hierarchy, and brand consistency.
• Deep understanding of design as a problem-solving discipline, not just decoration.
• Experience developing brand guidelines, templates, visual systems, or design standards.
• Ability to translate brand strategy and voice into practical visual principles.
• Strong creative review skills with the ability to guide designers without micromanaging.
• Experience ensuring brand design adapts across digital, print, social, campaigns, presentations, events, and product collateral.
• Strong organizational instincts around templates, asset libraries, file structures, and design processes.
• Proven ability to collaborate cross-functionally with marketing, creative, web, scientific, product, and commercial stakeholders.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance coverages
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) sessions
• Vacation time plus company holidays and paid sick leave
• Generous 401(k) with employer match
• Employee referral bonus
• Complimentary fruit, snacks, and beverages
• Complimentary catered lunches on Thursdays
• Complimentary EV charging
• Cell phone stipend

The right person for this role

You are a strong designer with a systems mindset, prioritizing beauty, clarity, consistency, and usefulness. You view design as a visual and creative problem-solving tool that clarifies ideas, guides attention, and supports meaning and engagement with information. You can detect when branding is fragmented, identify ineffective templates, and recognize divergent interpretations. You do not just make things look good you contribute to building the logic that makes good design repeatable.

Why this role matters

Zymo Research maintains a meaningful brand and earned trust within the scientific community. This role ensures the brand is visually coherent, recognizable, and scalable across all touchpoints.

Location

Onsite at Zymo Research Operations, 2961 Dow Ave., Tustin, CA 92780