---
title: 'Brand Design Lead at Valarian Technologies Limited'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/brand-design-lead-valarian-technologies-limited-london-b4d7wazh7asy'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-25'
---

# Brand Design Lead at Valarian Technologies Limited

- **Company:** Valarian Technologies Limited
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-25
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/valarian/0eb32c68-a0ed-4b53-8d95-518c4d59ec7c

## Job description

Valarian: A New Era of Sovereign Intelligence Valarian is a dual use technology company building critical tools to safeguard the future in an era of evolving global security challenges. Backed by a Series A funding round of $50m led by NEA, we are rethinking security beyond traditional military domains to address asymmetric threats that impact our technological advantage, economic strength, and democratic institutions. We provide the control infrastructure that allows government and regulated enterprise to put frontier-class AI to work safely. We are bringing a frontier AI experience inside secure boundaries for the first time. Our technology supports mission critical workflows across government, healthcare, and enterprise, including: Scaling open-weight models without external inference endpoints. Putting frontier class AI to work across organisations through partnerships with other leading AI startups such as Perplexity. Increasing operational resiliency for air gapped, on prem, and cloud based systems. Securing intellectual property and maintaining auditability for high stakes enterprise environments. Facilitating secure information flow during disaster response, M&A due diligence, and privileged legal communications. We’ve only scratched the surface. Built in Britain by veterans of the Ministry of Defence, British Forces, Darktrace, and elite engineering backgrounds, we are driven by a shared mission to safeguard western democracy . Whether you join our London HQ or our wider global organisation, you’ll be part of a collaborative, high performing team creating the cutting edge software and infrastructure that defines the frontier of enterprise AI.

## The Role

As Brand Design Lead at Valarian, you will define and execute our visual and product design strategy, elevating how our complex technology is experienced by government agencies, enterprise partners, and end users alike. You’ll be responsible for making security feel intuitive, modern, and powerful—from shaping the UI/UX of the Acra platform to crafting a distinct visual identity across our digital presence, collateral, and marketing touchpoints. This is a hands-on role combining high-level design strategy, systems thinking, and meticulous execution. You’ll work closely with Product, Engineering, BD, and Leadership to translate complex cryptographic and security infrastructure concepts into elegant, intuitive digital products and a cohesive, world-class brand identity. What you’ll do: Define & Evolve Brand Identity: Craft and safeguard Valarian’s brand language across all mediums, including visual assets, digital design, event collateral, pitch decks, and brand guidelines. Build Design Systems: Design, implement, and maintain scalable UI component libraries and design tokens that bridge product design and web/marketing presence. User Research & Validation: Work closely with Product Managers, Engineers, and stakeholders to understand complex user workflows (government, defence, enterprise) and iterate based on user testing and feedback. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with BD, Strategy, and Marketing teams to design compelling interactive assets, proposal/pitch materials, and client-facing product demonstrations. Complex Data Visualisation: Simplify highly technical workflows—such as zero-trust access, secure enclave monitoring, and data flows—into crisp, actionable dashboards and intuitive user interfaces. Maintain Accessibility & Standards: Ensure product accessibility, consistency, and clarity across all platforms while keeping usability front-and-center in high-stakes operational environments. Scale the Design Capability: Help establish design frameworks, standards, and playbooks as the business grows, with the opportunity to hire and mentor junior design talent over time. What you’ll bring: Proven Product & Brand Experience: Demonstrated experience designing complex digital products (SaaS, cybersecurity, enterprise platforms, or deep tech) along with strong brand/visual design capabilities. Mastery of Design Tools: Expertise in modern design and prototyping tools (Figma, Framer, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc.) and experience managing design systems. Translating Complexity: A track record of turning highly abstract, complex concepts (like encryption, zero-trust, or secure enclaves) into clean, elegant, and usable visual solutions. End-to-End Design Ownership: Ability to take a feature or brand asset from napkin sketch to user research, prototyping, and developer hand-off. Strong Visual Aesthetics: Sharp eye for typography, layout, iconography, color theory, and visual story-telling. Collaboration with Engineering: Experience working closely with front-end engineers, understanding technical constraints, CSS/HTML frameworks, and design system handoff processes. Adaptability in High-Growth Environments: Proven ability to move fast, balance perfection with speed-to-market, and prioritize high-impact initiatives. Excellent Communication: Strong presentation and storytelling skills—ability to articulate design choices clearly to technical, commercial, and executive stakeholders.

## Benefits

Our benefits are designed to ensure our employees feel taken care of and are proud to be a part of the Valarian team. We are committed to consistently enhancing our benefit package, taking into account the overall well-being and needs of our teammates. Here are the key benefits accessible to all employees at Valarian Technologies:

Equity – because you have the right to own what you’re building A competitive salary – because we value your unique skills Employer pension contributions – because you deserve a secure future Private health insurance - because your health is important to us Hybrid work setup – because everyone has different needs Gym memberships - because staying active fuels productivity Rewarding company retreats and meetups that respect your work/life balance – because we love getting to know each other

Life at Valarian

Our culture is built on inclusivity, compassion and flexibility – we want everyone to be empowered to achieve their goals at Valarian.

The work we do is vital, but so are the connections that make it happen. We thrive on the shared energy, spontaneous conversations, and mutual trust built when we spend time together. We operate on an office first hybrid model, regularly gathering in our London office to support one another and collaborate.

Valarian Technologies Limited is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applications from invdividuals regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran, amnesty, or any other legally protected characteristic.

We are committed to ensuring a fair and inclusive recruitment process and providing employment opportunities to all applicants. Decision recruitment, hiring, and employment are based solely on qualifications, skills, and experience relevant to the job requirements.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analysing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgement. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

## About Valarian Technologies Limited

## Company Overview
- **One‑liner**: Valarian builds infrastructure that lets enterprises and governments run AI, agents and applications inside a hardened, governed environment where the customer — not the vendor — holds the keys.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom
- **Founded**: 2020
- **Founders**: Max Buchan (CEO) and Josh McLaughlin (COO) [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/about)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: National security, defence, regulated enterprise (finance, critical infrastructure)
- **Target customers**: Government / defence organisations and regulated enterprises that require high‑trust, high‑stakes deployment (B2B)
- **Mission / purpose**: “Building the infrastructure to regain control over your high‑consequence systems” — giving customers model independence, auditability and containment without ceding control to a third party [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)

## Products & Services
- **ACRA (Automated Compartmentalised Runtime Architecture)**: A Kubernetes‑native control architecture that extends the cluster with workload‑level governance. Each workload (model, agent, service) runs inside its own enclave with built‑in policy enforcement, default‑deny networking, short‑lived secrets, per‑workload messaging and end‑to‑end audit. ACRA is cloud‑agnostic and can run on AWS, Azure, on‑prem or air‑gapped. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: **Total Funding – $70M** (Series A of $50M led by New Enterprise Associates, bringing total to $70M) [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: New Enterprise Associates (lead), plus “leading defence and national security investors”; also backed by operators from Palantir, Darktrace and US Special Operations. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/about)
- **Growth Signals**: Deployed across multiple continents; “100s of enclaves deployed”; headcount grew ~18.5% YoY (from 19 to ~24 employees); actively hiring across engineering, compliance and security roles. [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/valarian)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Customer‑held keys**: Even Valarian cannot access customer systems after deployment — governance is enforced by the infrastructure, not by privileged access. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)
- **Model‑independent**: Customers can run any model (open‑weight or frontier) without vendor lock‑in and without the model provider training on their data. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)
- **Built by operators with real‑world experience**: The team includes backgrounds from US Special Operations, Palantir, Darktrace, secure communications and high‑assurance systems, giving them credibility in environments where failure has real consequences. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/about)
- **Air‑gap ready**: ACRA is cloud‑agnostic and can operate in disconnected, air‑gapped environments — a rare capability designed from day one for government/defence deployments. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Scaling the platform for wider enterprise and government adoption; continuing to harden ACRA as the posture layer for AI workloads; expanding the team (engineering, security, compliance) to meet demand from regulated sectors. [jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/valarian)
- **Direction for growth**: Maintain “sovereign control” positioning — enabling customers to own their inference, data and access policies regardless of cloud or infrastructure substrate.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Hybrid work setup with a London HQ (flexibility where it matters, structure where it counts). [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/careers)
- **Compensation & benefits**: Competitive compensation, equity, and employer‑enhanced pension contributions. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/careers)
- **Engineering environment**: Work on deep infrastructure (Kubernetes, SPIFFE/SPIRE, Cilium, Istio, Vault, NATS, OpenTelemetry) in a high‑trust, high‑impact domain that spans government, defence and regulated enterprise. Engineers are expected to own meaningful pieces of the platform from day one.
- **Notable perks for job seekers**: Opportunity to work on a product that deals with cutting‑edge AI governance and national‑security‑grade isolation; small but growing team (24 people) where contributions are highly visible.

## Sources
1. [valarian.com – Product page](https://www.valarian.com/)
2. [valarian.com – About page](https://www.valarian.com/about)
3. [valarian.com – Careers page](https://www.valarian.com/careers)
4. [jobs.lever.co – Valarian open roles](https://jobs.lever.co/valarian)
5. [linkedin.com – Valarian company page](https://linkedin.com/company/valarian)

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