Creative Director / Story Crafter
Leadership Creative role at Sauna. San Francisco · full-time · $120,000–$220,000 base.
Growth Roles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Shape Sauna’s public story from founder insight and product details, adding your own point of view
- Turn the product’s human value into visual stories that move audiences
- Handle video and motion work from concept and shooting through design, editing, and release
- Set a consistent visual and editorial direction across Instagram and other social channels
- Build AI-assisted creative systems that help you publish high-quality work quickly
What you bring
- A portfolio of stories that reached people, with a clear explanation of what made the work effective
- Strong motion-design ability, including HTML, CSS, or code alongside tools such as After Effects, C4D, or Blender
- The ability to create videos yourself or cast and direct others while understanding why the result works
- Hands-on experience building personal workflows with Claude Code or similar AI creative tools
- Independence to take an idea from a blank page through publication without close management
Who this fits
You’ll thrive as a hands-on creative leader who can shape a company story, make the work yourself, and carry ideas from concept through release. This is a full-time, in-person position at Sauna’s Presidio office in San Francisco, five days each week. You must already live in the Bay Area or relocate before starting and have US work authorization; O-1 or J-1 sponsorship may be available for exceptional candidates.
From the employer
⚠️ Please read first
This is a full-time, in-person role based in San Francisco (Presidio) - we work from the office 5 days a week.
You must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate before starting.
We require US work authorisation, but are open to O-1 or J-1 visa sponsorship for exceptional candidates.
About Sauna by Wordware
Most AI products hand you a coworker on day one and hope you trust it. Sauna is the coworker you raise: it starts by learning how you work, earns autonomy task by task, and ends up running hours of work on its own while you keep taste, review, and the final say. Wordware is the ~20-person team behind it, backed by Spark Capital, Felicis, and Y Combinator with a $30M seed, the largest in YC history. We build from a San Francisco office in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, and we work absurdly hard because we can see and feel the outcome every day.
About the Role:
We're the first multiplayer AI, and our product is years ahead of how we tell its story. We ship something remarkable most weeks and it barely leaves the building. That's the gap you close.
We're looking for a story crafter. Not a video editor, not a social manager, not a brand cop. Someone who owns the narrative of what Sauna is in the world: pulls it out of the founder's head, adds their own taste, and pushes it out until people feel it. You tell that story beautifully with visuals: motion, film, and the whole creative surface.
What You'll Do:
The narrative of Sauna, in the world: extract the story from the founder + product, sharpen it with your own POV, make it land everywhere.
The story, told in visuals: find the human reason anyone should care, then make it move people. The heart of the role.
Motion + video, end to end: concept, shoot, motion design, edit, publish. Hands-on in the timeline.
Instagram + our social presence: set the visual/editorial direction and keep it coherent.
Creative pipelines that output at volume: build repeatable systems (Sauna itself, Claude Code, AI tooling) so we ship a lot, fast. Volume with taste.
Who You Are:
Crafts stories that move people; can point to work that traveled and say why it worked.
Real motion-design chops — and in the AI era that now includes HTML/CSS/code, not just After Effects/C4D/Blender.
Could be the creator, not just the director (Johnny Harris style), or cast + direct one. Either way knows what makes that video work.
Has built with Claude Code (or similar) + AI creative tooling — wired up their own pipelines, not just prompted once.
Takes an idea from zero to published without being managed there.
Compensation & Benefits:
Base salary: $120K–$220K + meaningful early-stage equity + health, dental, 401(k), considerable PTO, gym budget, lunch.
The Process:
We keep our process simple. Exceptional candidates go from first touch to offer within 2 weeks.
1. Application: Submit your resume and answer a few short questions.
2. 15-minute intro call: Quick check to align on location, motivation, and logistics. If it's a go, we move fast from here.
3. Portfolio review & craft interview: Walk us through your work and the decisions behind it.
4. Final conversation: We answer your questions and scope out the work trial.
5. Work trial: Paid, in person, usually a few days to two weeks. You work on a real project with us. See how we work, see if it fits, both sides.