Director of Design Aeon Industrial Inc. Austin, TX Job Details Full-time $115,000 - $135,000 a year 16 hours ago Benefits Health savings account Health insurance Dental insurance Paid time off Vision insurance Qualifications Typography Illustration Logo design Brand identity design Adobe After Effects Art direction Full Job Description Aeon is a vertically integrated defense company building next-generation strike systems and hardware at industrial scale. The engineering is real, the pace is fast, and the work speaks for itself in a room of people who already understand it. What we do not yet have is a brand that carries any of that to everyone else. That is this job. You will own how Aeon looks, reads, and feels — to customers, to partners, to the engineers we are trying to recruit, and to the people deciding what gets built next. This is a maker's role. You will not be writing briefs and reviewing agency work. You will be in the file, making the thing, and shipping it. If the last few years pulled you away from the craft and into managing other people's output, this is a way back in — and for the right designer, that is the entire appeal. You would be our first design hire, reporting directly to the CEO. There is no legacy brand to protect and no committee to route through. What You'll Own The whole brand. These four areas are the job as it exists today; you will tell us what the fifth one should be. Visual Identity Define and own Aeon's visual system end to end — logo, typography, color, photography and illustration direction, motion. Establish how we render and photograph hardware. In defense, the product shot carries most of the brand. Write a brand guide people actually use, then hold the line on it as the company grows. Web Own aeon's site: design it, ship it, and keep it current as the product line and the message change. Design the recruiting surface. For a company hiring engineers this fast, the careers page is a product. Work in whatever gets it live — hand off cleanly to engineering, or build it yourself in Framer or Webflow. Decks Investor, customer, and government decks that hold up in front of a skeptical room. Build a template system so that every deck leaving the company looks like it came from the same company. Turn dense technical material into something a non-engineer can follow in ninety seconds without dumbing it down. Swag & Physical Patches, coins, apparel, booths, signage, packaging — the physical objects people choose to keep. Run vendors and production end to end: materials, samples, quality, lead times, cost. Treat this as strategy, not merch. In this industry, the thing on someone's plate carrier is recruiting, culture, and reputation at once. And the Part That Ties It Together Partner with the CEO and engineering to turn what we are building into narrative — launch materials, product pages, social, video direction. Decide what you make yourself and when to bring in a specialist. Photographers, illustrators, and printers still exist; you just are not hiding behind them. A Rough First Year Directional, not a contract. You will help us rewrite this in your first month. First 90 days: audit what exists, land a refreshed identity system, and get deck templates into the company's hands.

Six months:

new site live, hardware photography and render direction established, physical goods program running.

Twelve months:

one coherent brand across web, product, recruiting, and physical — and a clear case for what the design team becomes next. What We're Looking For 7+ years designing brand systems, with a portfolio showing real range — identity, web, print, and physical goods, not one of the four. A maker first. Deep craft in Figma and Adobe CS; motion, 3D, or render work (After Effects, Blender, KeyShot, Cinema 4D) is a strong plus. You have taken a brand from rough to real at a company that was scaling underneath you, and you can point to what you personally made. Web design ability with enough technical fluency to work with engineers, or to ship it yourself. Production experience with physical objects. You know what a vendor needs from you and what a bad sample looks like. Range from technical precision to emotional storytelling, and the judgment to know which one a given piece needs. Real interest in the subject matter. You do not have to be an engineer, but you have to want to understand the hardware. Comfort operating solo and remote with a direct line to a busy CEO — you set your own priorities and bring back finished work. Bonus Points Hardware, aerospace, defense, industrial, or heavy-tech experience. Motion and video direction, or industrial design and 3D rendering. You have built a brand guide that people outside the design team actually followed.

Pay:

$115,000.00 - $135,000.00 per year

Benefits:

Dental insurance Health insurance Health savings account Paid time off Vision insurance

Work Location:

Hybrid remote in Austin, TX 78758