Creative Team Lead – DTC/ Ecommerce & Print Design Creative
About the Role:
We’re hiring an Art Director / Senior Art Director to lead creative quality and team output as we build the next phase of our agency. This is a team lead role (not a true director-level position), with a clear path to promotion based on performance.
This Role Competently Will:
- Drive creative leadership (direction + leads high quality standards & process improvements for team + innovation for clients).
- Manages team growth and AI integration and innovations responsible AI workflows.
- Growing, developing and innovating on brand guides
- Building brands, identifying brands USP & product market fit and gaps across marketing channels.
- Comprehensively design, imagine and lead digital design (ie. websites, emails, landing pages, social tiles etc) and print design (product packaging, direct mailers, inserts, shipping packaging).
- Competitive reference research and application to the clients brand and its evolution.
- Leadership partnership and progress management through reporting up with clear, proactive communication on timelines, scope, and red flags to allow the team to mobilize to resolve impending issues.
- Research and competitive reference development.
- Reporting up clearly and consistently.
- Operational excellence: staying on scope/timelines, communicating proactively about risks/red flags, and protecting internal team bandwidth and always leveraging the clients needs, preferences and brand guidelines to build the most effective product limiting rounds of revision.
We work with brands across the growth journey (pre-revenue to $600M+), including DTC/ecommerce/consumer, plus some B2B and direct-response/social-first brands scaling beyond social. Our differentiation is not templates—it’s distinctive, ownable creative systems and higher-quality execution in an AI-changing landscape.
Onboarding & training: There will be a progressive onboarding plan, robust AI training, and an immediate team you can plug into (internal dossiers, templates, reference systems, and active project context).
The Ideal Candidate:
- Sophisticated design preferences and strong awareness of the current trends and market standards in DTC and relevant industries and the ability to clearly identify what makes creative work strong/weak.
- You can give actionable feedback, lead critique/review, and guide creative improvements.
- You understand visual hierarchy, typography, layout, composition, and brand consistency.
- You collaborate effectively with copy so messaging and visuals align.
- You’re change-agile and can use AI responsibly to accelerate research, iteration, documentation, and consistency—without losing originality or standards.
- You’re highly accountable: you stick to scope and timelines and communicate proactively about risks/red flags.
- You care about people and outcomes—how your actions affect teammates and client relationships.
- Experience with softwares: Asana, Slack, Figma, Google Suite, Klaviyo, ChatGPT/claude or preferred AI
Core High-level Responsibilities
- Develop brand-focused concepts in Figma and Adobe Creative Suite for products in print and digital for the DTC and ecommerce market
- Build processes to better onboard new clients to the internal team to ensure a rapid understanding of the brand.
- Train continuously, stay aware of the client/brands SWOT & competitors to ensure we are providing the most up to date information, creative products and strategies.
- Execute and/or lead design across relevant touchpoints.
- Provide clear, actionable critiques and quality assurances/scorecard feedback loops to ensure team growth and accountability
- Maintain organized files and reusable systems/framework and build process improvements.
- Ensure we are appropriately leveraging and utilizing AI and tech with continuously monthly proposals for tech improvements to streamline work and keep efficiency top of mind
- Partner with Strategy, Copy, Design, Project Management, and Executive Leadership to deliver cohesive workflow and ensure that the client is getting an excellent end product and experience
Core Ownership & Accountability:
- 1) Creative Leadership & Quality Ownership
- Lead creative quality across active projects through structured reviews.
- Ensure deliverables meet brand strategy, ecommerce best practices, and internal quality standards.
- Own QA before internal/client handoff.
- 2) Full DTC / Ecommerce Touchpoint Coverage (Hands-On)You will touch (with scope/direction provided) and be expected to execute reliably across:
- Web / landing page / product page mock-ups
- Email
- Paid media / direct-response creative (as needed)
- SMS (as needed)
- Packaging / labels / inserts
- Direct mail
- Social content creative
- Brand guides / brand identity systems
- Product visual support
- Any other DTC needs required by client scope
- 3) Competitive Research & Creative Differentiation
- Research competitive creative and maintain reference libraries.
- Use AI responsibly for inspiration/research/iteration while keeping work strategically original.
- 4) Reporting Up + Proactive Risk Communication
- Stay current on internal dossiers and project expectations.
- Communicate clearly and early with leadership on concerns, timeline risk, resourcing needs, and red flags.
- 5) AI Enablement (Internal)
- Help run internal AI training and workflow improvements.
Client-Facing Expectations
- This role will not be client facing, but the work will always need to be client ready, our team acts as an internal extension of our clients teams.
- We live in a service mentality, and are always looking to deliver the highest value and communication to our project managers so they can appropriately communicate to our clients.
- We have internal project management to streamline work and protect the team from unnecessary personal outreach.
- Depending on growth and business needs, you may eventually join select calls.
- Position Requirements
- 3–7+ years relevant experience (art direction, brand/digital design, ecommerce/digital design, packaging as applicable, or related)
- Strong portfolio showing brand identity systems + DTC/ecommerce/digital execution
- Proficiency in Figma and Adobe Creative Suite
- Experience leading critique/review or guiding designers (or equivalent strong senior collaboration)
- Strong communication and organizational skills for reporting up
- Ability to work fast without sacrificing quality in a high-ownership remote environment
Core Values
- Accountability
- Respect
- Integrity / Transparency
- Solution-Oriented Mindset
- Caring about how your actions affect the people around you (team members and clients)
- Thinking and acting proactively
- Always assume positive intent
- Don't assume anything, instead seek to understand
- Treat every client like they are a part of your team and take care of them like you would if this was your business.
Job Types: Contract, Full-time
Pay: $36,000.00 - $72,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Paid time off
- Professional development assistance
Application Question(s):
Education:
Experience:
- Graphic Design: 5 years (Required)
- Remote Leadership: 1 year (Required)
- Digital Design : 2 years (Required)
- Print and graphics design : 1 year (Required)
- building brand guides : 1 year (Required)
- Figma: 1 year (Required)
- Leadership: 1 year (Required)
Work Location: Remote
