Associate Designer

Sundae School is a Korean heritage streetwear brand where Korean identity is the engine, not the costume. The brand operates between New York and Seoul — creative direction in NYC, the studio and production team in Korea (three product designers and a production MD on the ground, with a growing vendor and factory network). We're hiring a bilingual Associate Designer in NYC to be the founder's design right hand: the person who translates his creative intent into briefs the Korea team can execute against, reviews their work before it reaches him, and increasingly represents him in Korea team meetings when he can't be in them.This is a hands-on role with real proxy authority over time. You start as the brief author and reviewer; you grow into leading full design on your own styles.What you'll doThe design brief is yours. Turn the founder's direction — verbal, sketched, mood-boarded — into concept CADs, mood boards, and written briefs in Korean. Illustrator essential, CLO3D a plus. Korea designers build their production techpacks from your briefs, so the cleaner and more specific the brief, the closer samples come back to intent.Review production techpacks coming back from Korea. Korea designers author the production-ready spec; you read it, catch issues, ask the right questions in Korean, and route a clean version for the founder's approval. You're the founder's eyes before he sees the work.Run the sample approval pipeline. Receive sample photos and physical samples from Korea, organize them, write fit and finish notes, prep what the founder needs to approve in a single session per drop. As trust builds, sign off on routine samples yourself.Lead the weekly Korea team meeting in Korean on behalf of the founder when he can't be there. Drop status, design questions, blockers, sample reviews. Walk away with action items the team commits to in writing.Own the design pipeline in Monday.com. Every active style, where it is, who's blocking it, when it's due. The founder should