Lead Designer The Opportunity (Full-time, Bay Area)

We are seeking a designer with exceptional taste to be the core design brain of Taxa.

Taxa is building a portfolio of consumer brands on the science of the skin microbiome, spanning deodorant, eczema care, mosquito repellent, and more, across the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia. You will chart the design and brand direction for Taxa, our holding company, and for every brand and product we launch, including Swap Deodorant. Some of these brands are fully formed, some are mid-rebrand, and others don't exist yet. You will help decide what they look like, how they feel, and how they fit together.

This role would not be possible without AI. You will build a working style around AI tools and agents that lets you generate, prototype, and present a huge volume of high-quality concepts and assets, then use your taste and judgment to steer the models toward the few directions that are right. When a direction clicks, you will extend it quickly across a full design system and work with the team to implement it. You will present directions to company leadership and advisors, gather feedback, and iterate rapidly.

You are the only designer at Taxa and will report directly to the CEO. You will have high ownership and high autonomy. You will lean on AI for scale and on external agencies for production, and you will act as our design lead, filter, and owner's rep with those agencies.

What You Will Own

✔️ Design and brand direction — Chart design and brand direction for the Taxa holdco and each consumer brand, across multiple categories and geographies. Lead ideation for brands that are nascent or don't yet exist, and shape the rebrands now underway for Taxa and Swap Deodorant.

✔️ AI-driven concepting and prototyping — Use AI tools to prototype and model out many directions quickly, such as identity, packaging, product, web, and campaign concepts. Present them to leadership and advisors, take feedback, and refine. Turn what works into reference material that makes the next round faster and better.

✔️ Original design and production-ready polish — Create new designs from scratch in-house, and refine promising concepts into production-ready direction and assets.

✔️ Agency partnership and owner's rep — Be the liaison between Taxa and external design agencies. You will brief them, direct their work, and act as a strong filter on quality and brand fit.

✔️ Design system and cross-team implementation — Own the design and brand guidelines and make them easy for the team to follow. Build robust systems and references, including AI-enabled checks, so that team members can create materials that comply by default across internal dashboards, decks, and art as well as external materials like our website. You will work closely with the team to implement designs across the company and proactively make sure guidelines are being applied correctly and consistently.

✔️ Marketing and digital asset upkeep — Maintain and update marketing and digital assets, including decks and consumer-facing content on websites and packaging. Once the systems and references are strong, you will automate as much of this as possible and keep quality high with minimal manual effort.

Required Qualifications

✔️ Exceptional taste — strong discernment for identifying and ideating new directions, and the judgment to refine them into polished, production-ready work. A clear point of view on what makes a brand feel distinctive, premium, and credible, and the ability to articulate why.

✔️ Portfolio of real work — include a link to a portfolio in your resume showing what you've designed or built, and describe exactly what your contribution was on each project.

✔️ Brand design experience — experience at a brand or agency, ideally one with a standout reputation, developing or evolving brand identities and consumer-facing work.

✔️ Curiosity and fluency with AI tools — a track record of experimenting with new AI tools and implementing them intelligently, with a repeatable workflow for generating, curating, and refining large volumes of high-quality work. Comfortable directing AI agents to do heavy lifting.

✔️ Operator-level throughput — ability to manage many brands and many priorities at once and produce a large amount of high-quality work quickly.

✔️ Agency direction — able to write clear briefs, give sharp feedback, and hold external agencies to a high standard, so they implement your vision without you needing to execute in their tools yourself.

✔️ Systems thinking — can turn taste into guidelines, templates, and references that others and AI tools can follow consistently.

✔️ Strong communication and collaboration — presents directions clearly and persuasively to leadership and advisors, takes feedback well, and works effectively with colleagues across science, operations, and marketing.

✔️ Proactive, high-ownership mindset — comfortable with high autonomy and driving work forward without waiting to be asked.

✔️ Full on-site availability — based in or willing to relocate to the Bay Area.

✔️ Authorized to work in the U.S. — visa sponsorship is not available for this role.

Transparent Compensation

✔️ Base salary — $100,000 annual.

✔️ Equity — meaningful equity package as a core component of total compensation.

✔️ Benefits — comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.

✔️ Retirement — 401(k) plan with 6% employer match.