---
title: 'Senior Brand Designer at Tolan'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-brand-designer-tolan-san-francisco-1pvse10jybzn'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Senior Brand Designer at Tolan

- **Company:** Tolan
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $150k–$180k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/tolan/d4249f07-a452-454f-9b46-e755ca8f7b38

## Job description

Tolan is building personal AI that helps people think, reflect, and take action in their real lives. We're an experienced team that previously founded Even, acquired for $300M in 2022. Tolan is backed by the designers and founders behind Instagram, Retro, Behance, Vimeo, and Notion.

## The role

You'll be our first brand designer, and for a while, our only one. Tolan's brand has personality. It's playful, warm, a bit offbeat, and people respond to it. So far it's come from external partners working alongside the team, without anyone fully devoted to it day to day. Your job is to be that person: responsible for creating great work, and building scalable systems around that work. You’ll also raise the level of craft across everything we put out, and figure out what a more elevated version of Tolan looks like over time, while still remaining true to our roots. This person should have a considered view on what happens to that world as the brand matures: what gets refined, what gets kept as-is, what gets used more sparingly, and what a system built around it should look like at a higher level of craft. This role reports to our Head of Brand, [Court Klein](https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtklein/) and will also work closely with our founders.

## What You’ll Do

- Own and evolve the brand identity and standards, including visual language, typography, color, illustration and motion, ensuring it scales gracefully across every touchpoint
- Create guidelines that let non-designers on the team produce decent work on their own
- Develop campaign concepts, from the initial idea through to the finished assets
- Craft flagship reports, whitepapers, and long-form editorial where hierarchy and typography carry the weight
- Oversee marketing site design across new pages, campaigns, and refreshes
- Finding and directing outside specialists (illustration, motion, photo, print) when a project calls for it
- Build scalable design systems and templates that can be executed quickly without sacrificing brand quality

Who We're Looking For

- Strong portfolio that demonstrates depth, taste, and impact. What you’ve built has driven products, teams, and entire companies forward.
- Range. Fast-turn social assets and a launch campaign should both be within reach, at the same level of care.
- AI-Forward. You’ll have an unlimited token budget to leverage the latest tools, but your work still needs to be distinctly human.
- Autonomy and ability to navigate ambiguity. You can take a vague ask and quickly ship high quality work without checking in ad nauseam.
- Comfort with editorial and long-form layout. A meaningful share of our work lives there.
- Expert in brand systems. You can build frameworks that empower diverse teams to produce consistent work at scale.
- Roughly 4 - 6 years of brand design experience, with a balanced track record of tactical and strategic work.
- Possible shapes:
- You’ve worked as the main brand designer at a smaller company, or the second or third designer on a larger team with a high craft bar.
- Agency experience is a plus, and we’re also open to hiring direct from agency.
- Bonus points for experience in VC-backed CPG and/or Consumer Tech.
- We care more about what you've made than where you made it.

Compensation: $150,000 - 180,000 base salary + equity + benefits

## About Tolan

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Tolan builds an AI-powered virtual alien friend that provides emotional support and companionship for everyday people.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A; $30M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: Not publicly disclosed (public launch February 2025)
- **Founders**: Quinten Farmer (CEO), Evan Goldschmidt (CTO), Ajay Mehta (President)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI companionship / Consumer AI / Emotional wellness technology
- **Target customers**: B2C – individuals seeking emotional support, companionship, and personal growth through an AI friend
- **Mission or purpose**: To give every person on Earth access to their own personal AGI – a trusted AI companion ([tolans.com](https://www.tolans.com/))

## Products & Services
- **Tolan App**: A voice-first, embodied AI companion presented as a cute alien friend. Users can talk, interact, and build a relationship with the AI. The product emphasizes character design, low-latency voice interaction, and emotional attunement. It is available as a mobile app with a 4.8-star rating ([tolans.com](https://www.tolans.com/)). More than 100,000 paying subscribers and over 2 million hours spent with Tolan companions ([nextplayso.substack.com](https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/should-you-join-tolan)).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: $12M ARR (as of early 2025) and $30M total funding ($10M seed led by Lachy Groom in Feb 2025, $20M Series A led by Khosla Ventures in Aug 2025) ([linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tolans); [nextplayso.substack.com](https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/should-you-join-tolan))
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Khosla Ventures, Lachy Groom, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Mike Krieger (Instagram co-founder), and founders of Notion, Replit, and more ([tolans.com](https://www.tolans.com/))
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Over 100,000 paying subscribers and 130,000+ user reviews ([tolans.com](https://www.tolans.com/))
  - Employee headcount grew ~70% YoY (from ~23 to 38) ([linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tolans))
  - Viral organic growth driven by social media marketing ([nextplayso.substack.com](https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/should-you-join-tolan))

## Competitive Advantages
- **Emotional impact**: 85.6% of users said Tolan helped them through an emotionally difficult experience; 72.5% said it helped manage or improve a relationship ([tolans.com](https://www.tolans.com/))
- **Research-backed design**: Founded by a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and Vanderbilt doctoral researcher, bringing evidence-based approaches to AI companionship ([tolans.com](https://www.tolans.com/))
- **Mature culture & veteran team**: Core team previously built (and sold) Even to Walmart; low ego, direct communication, no politics ([nextplayso.substack.com](https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/should-you-join-tolan))
- **AI-native engineering**: Encourages use of AI tools in the interview process and in daily work, reflecting a pragmatic, high-velocity development approach ([tolans.com/relay](https://tolans.com/relay/how-we-hire-engineers-when-ai-writes-our-code))

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale responsibly**: Moving from a successful consumer app toward “giving every person access to their own personal AGI” while avoiding short-term monetization that harms users ([nextplayso.substack.com](https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/should-you-join-tolan))
- **Deepen embodiment & interactivity**: Continued investment in character design, voice AI (GPT‑5.1), and emotional intelligence systems ([tolans.com](https://www.tolans.com/))
- **Hire for judgment and pace**: Prioritizing engineers and creatives who can balance AI-generated code with human oversight and ship fast without sacrificing quality ([tolans.com/relay](https://tolans.com/relay/how-we-hire-engineers-when-ai-writes-our-code))

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as “the calmest culture I’ve ever seen” – direct, low-ego, drama-free, with a focus on doing great work quickly ([nextplayso.substack.com](https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/should-you-join-tolan))
- **Work environment**: In-person in San Francisco; small, veteran team (~38 people) where every hire makes a significant impact ([tolans.com](https://www.tolans.com/careers); [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tolans))
- **Engineering philosophy**: AI tools are fully embraced – candidates are evaluated on how they use AI to build, and daily work is heavily AI-augmented. Engineers are expected to own the output, not just the code ([tolans.com/relay](https://tolans.com/relay/how-we-hire-engineers-when-ai-writes-our-code))
- **Perks/Notes**: Not explicitly listed; the focus is on meaningful work, long hours when needed but a marathon mindset, and a fun, intelligent team ([nextplayso.substack.com](https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/should-you-join-tolan))

## Sources
1. [tolans.com – Company Overview](https://www.tolans.com/)
2. [tolans.com – Careers Page](https://www.tolans.com/careers)
3. [linkedin.com – Tolan Company Profile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tolans)
4. [nextplayso.substack.com – “Should you join: Tolan”](https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/should-you-join-tolan)
5. [tolans.com/relay – “How We Hire Engineers When AI Writes Our Code”](https://tolans.com/relay/how-we-hire-engineers-when-ai-writes-our-code)

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