Associate Creative Director, Brand & Design

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 will be 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

Minimum Qualifications:

• 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

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

Additional Requirements:

• Ability to travel up to 10% of the time
• Willingness to work overtime, or weekends to support critical mission milestones