Job Overview
We're looking for a Senior Brand Designer to help define and evolve how Buildkite's visual identity is perceived.
This is a rare "drive the whole surface" role, sitting in a centralised Brand & Design team that owns branding, product design, and developer experience. You'll be a steward of the brand—but not in a gatekeeper way. But in a make-it-real, make-it-better, make-it-scale way.
Buildkite has the stability of a 13-year-old company but the appetite to take real creative risks. We don't have brand fundamentals properly in place yet—that's never been a priority. Now it is. The person in this role won't just set the foundations; they'll do the analytical work to determine whether we refresh the brand as part of future potential initiatives. If we do, you're in the seat driving that.
Our customers are platform engineers at companies like Shopify, Uber, and Canva—teams responsible for software delivery at some of the biggest engineering organisations on the planet. They're a skeptical, technically sophisticated audience. The brand needs to earn credibility with that crowd while standing out in an increasingly homogenised market.
🚀 What You'll Do
Evolve the brand
- Refresh and refine Buildkite's visual identity as the company grows
- Set and maintain a high bar for visual quality across all brand touchpoints
- Ensure the brand remains confident, coherent, and unmistakably Buildkite
Shape how the brand shows up
- Define how the brand appears across key surfaces: website, large-scale initiatives (upcoming podcast, user conference), product-adjacent moments, marketing, and content
- Partner closely with Marketing, Sales, Product, and Engineering to deliver a cohesive, dev-first brand experience
- Balance clarity, consistency, and speed while publishing real work
Design experiences and campaigns
- Design community, activation, and experiential experiences—from small meetups to major industry conference presences
- Create physical environments, signage, booths, and activations within real-world constraints
- Ideate and execute campaigns across static and digital formats (bonus points if you have motion chops)
- Art-direct standout merch with a sustainable, considered approach, including managing global illustrators and specialist partners for tailored item production
Build systems that scale
- Evolve and maintain brand guidelines, org templates, and reusable frameworks
- Enable others to ship high-quality, on-brand work independently, educating on best practice along the way
- Treat our brand as a living system, not a set of one-off assets
- Bonus: use motion design and/or video post to bring ideas to life when it adds value
🎨 What You Bring
- Pursuit of world-class visual craft with obsessive attention to detail
- Proven experience designing across mediums: digital, physical, print
- Care about sustainability, accessibility, and inclusivity as part of great design, not as an afterthought
- Proven ability to openly tackle problem-solving, together or individually
- Proven ability to give and receive constructive feedback and critique in an open, candid environment
- Comfortable juggling multiple projects, stakeholders, and timelines without dropping execution quality
- High empathy and effective communication skills. As a remote-first team, we value deep work, try to minimise tool distraction, and collaborate constantly as a high-trust small team
- Ability to work across Figma and Adobe, translating onscreen RGB to physical CMYK/spots and back again
Additional Experience That's a Plus
- Motion and/or video capabilities
- Knowledge of CI and devtools (not a dealbreaker)
- Use of AI in tackling process problems isn't mandated, though we'll ask about it to understand your PoV
How We Work
- Autonomously, with agency; you'll join a small team of high-performing ICs, with the ability to drive and influence business impact from the start
- Async by default, with focused sync for decisions, pairing, and unblock moments
- We ship iteratively; small releases, tight feedback loops, measurable improvements
- We document and work in the open; decisions, risks, tradeoffs, fails, the lot
- We aim for craft and delight, but we don't worship polish over progress
✨ Why Join Buildkite
At Buildkite, we value kindness, autonomy, and collaboration. You'll be joining a remote-first company where your work directly helps some of the world's best engineering teams build and ship software faster and more safely.
- Competitive compensation, including salary, equity, and benefits package
- Flexible, remote-first culture
- Meaningful creative challenges at a company ready to invest in brand
- Opportunities for professional growth, creative leadership, and cross-team influence
- A collaborative, inclusive, and innovative culture where your ideas make a real impact
🌈 Equal Opportunity Employer
At Buildkite, we value diversity and celebrate all types of skills, backgrounds, and experiences. We’re dedicated to fostering an inclusive environment and providing reasonable accommodations throughout our recruitment process.
If you need any accommodations or support during the application or interview process, please reach out to us at accommodations@buildkite.com.
