Senior Design Director

The Senior Design Director will be a pivotal creative leader responsible for elevating design excellence, creative direction, and leading and growing the Design team across the HCM portfolio of brands and communities. This role oversees the design process from concept to execution, ensuring every project reflects and evolves our brand voice across both physical and digital experiences. 

This role sits at the intersection of creativity and business, responsible for shaping compelling brand experiences while ensuring design operations run efficiently and effectively to deliver best in class results for our clients and communities. This role will balance big-picture thinking with hands-on execution—translating business goals and client needs into exceptional visual storytelling across both digital and physical platforms. As a seasoned manager and skilled practitioner, you will define and evolve our creative direction, oversee end-to-end execution, and support our high-performing, collaborative design team. 

Team Leadership & Operations

• Team Management: Supervise and manage mid-to-senior level designers, providing consistent feedback to foster a collaborative environment of creative excellence.
• Resourcing & Delegation: Lead design team resourcing for in-house and campaign projects; delegate work effectively to promote individual career growth.
• Agile Project Management: Utilize Asana to champion project delivery and continuous improvement initiatives across the team.
• Stakeholder Management: Represent the design team in high-profile and cross-departmental discussions, translating business and user needs into actionable workflows.

Creative Strategy & Vision

• Oversee Creative Direction: Lead the day-to-day quality and execution of all creative assets, ensuring they meet the highest standards of craft and attention to detail.
• Brand Evolution: Implement and monitor creative platforms and design systems that advance the HCM voice across digital, social, and experiential verticals.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Collaborate with Account Managers, Editors, Event Leads and Sales leads to develop actionable insights and scalable creative recommendations that align with company and client goals.
• Innovation: Evaluate new formats, technologies, and workflows to unlock growth and scale production efficiency. Exploration and interest in integrating AI within our day-to-day design tools. 

Execution & Craft

• Hands-on Design: Lead by example by creating high-quality graphics, motion assets, and visual concepts for digital, social, newsletters, experiential, and more.
• Creative Ideation: Initiate regular story- and project-specific visual brainstorms with art and editorial teams.
• Process Development: Maintain materials for design processes and product education to ensure team-wide alignment.