Director of Design

🚀 About Soundstripe Soundstripe is a premier music licensing platform used by more than a million creators and professionals globally to level up their creative works, including tv shows, films, advertising, podcasts, and video games. Launched in 2016 by three professional musicians, the company fuels creativity for all types of customers, from amateur social creators to freelance filmmakers and podcasters to the world’s largest agencies and major brands, like Microsoft, Pepsi, Netflix, Adobe, Fabletics, Bud Light, and more. Since its inception, Soundstripe has issued over 20 million content licenses from its diverse catalog of over 56,000 fully cleared audio tracks, as well as from its catalog of 90,000 sound effects and 100,000 video clips. The company is based in Nashville and its catalog is supported by a roster of award-winning musical artists, including heavy hitters like Sam Barsh (Doja Cat, The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar), VAULTZ (Lorde, Maggie Rogers), and Elise Solberg (Beyonce, Ellie Goulding). Our culture blends the creative spirit of the music industry with the data-driven, performance mindset of a high-growth tech company. We thrive on innovation, agility, and driving results that matter. Soundstripe is a 6-time winner of the Tennessean’s Top Workplace Award and a certified Great Place to Work . Learn more about us here . 🎯 The Opportunity As our Director of Design, you’ll be the central design authority at Soundstripe. This is a player-coach role: you’ll own the design vision and do the work. You’ll report directly to the CTO and lead a small team (currently one staff designer focused on brand/marketing). The right person is product-design-primary with enough brand sensibility and experience to provide creative direction across both surfaces. If you believe beautiful aesthetics are typically indicative of overall product quality, you’ve found your people. We’re deeply AI-native as a company. It’s how we build and operate, how we design, and increasingly how our products work. We need a design leader who thinks in systems and sees AI as a force multiplier for design quality and velocity. If you’re looking for a role where you set the bar rather than inherit it, this is it. 🔥 Your Impact Product Experience & Strategy Collaborate closely with the Directors of Product and Engineering to bring products to life, from ideation through execution and launch. Help drive strategy to meet and expand our customer base's needs as we grow Soundstripe Lead and drive strategically to solve customer problems and build solutions as we expand from B2C to B2B to B2E Own product design across our web platform and new product surfaces, from concept to shipped pixels Advocate for UX quality in product and leadership discussions. Be the voice of the customer in the room Creative Direction & Brand Own the aesthetic and emotional identity of the Soundstripe brand in partnership with Marketing. You're the final word on whether something looks and feels like us Provide creative direction across product and brand/marketing design. You don't need to do all the brand work, but you set the standard Ensure brand and marketing surfaces drive engagement, awareness, and acquisition, not just look good Design Systems & AI Tooling Lead and maintain our design system, including token-based components and Figma-to-code (and vice versa) workflows Think in systems, not just screens. Design tokens, component architecture, and scalable patterns that let a small team punch way above its weight, especially when paired with AI tooling Rethink design workflows with AI at the center. From Figma-to-code pipelines and automated/semi-automated asset generation, to using LLMs for UX research synthesis, spec writing, and prototyping. You'll be expected to lead AI adoption within design, not wait for engineering to hand you tools 🧠 What You Bring Strong product design portfolio: you’ve shipped consumer or SaaS products and can show the thinking behind the result Experience leading design: you’ve been part of a small company or startup where you were both strategist and executor Comfort with brand and marketing design, even if product is your primary lane: at our scale, the lines blur Design systems experience: you’ve built or maintained component libraries and know how to bridge design and engineering Hands-on experience with: Figma variables, design tokens, and LLM-powered code-generation workflows Strong communication and follow-through: you surface problems early, keep commitments, and don’t disappear into a design cave Willingness to push back: you have opinions about what’s right for the user and you’ll defend them in the room, respectfully and directly AI-native mindset: you’ve already integrated AI into your design process (prototyping, research, asset generation, spec writing, whatever) and you have opinions about where it works and where it doesn’t. This isn’t a "nice to have": it’s core to how we operate Bonus points if you’ve worked with music, media, or creative tools, or if you’ve worked directly with a technical founder or CTO 🌱 Why Soundstripe? We’re an entrepreneurial, creative team Autonomy and ownership: your impact will be visible and celebrated Collaborative, flexible work environment Remote (US-based), with occasional in-person time in Nashville or other US state(s) for onsites and offsites a few times a year Small, high-trust team. Low process, high ownership Reports to the CTO Disclaimer Soundstripe is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce. Soundstripe provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Soundstripe complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.