[Hiring] Design Director @BASIC/DEPT®

Role Description

We are looking for a Director, Visual Design who is part visionary, part practitioner, and entirely uncompromising when it comes to quality. This is an embedded, high-impact role with an operational split of hands-on visual craft and team leadership. You will act as an autonomous "player-coach" who leads by doing—defining the work directly in working files, setting the bar for excellence, and solving complex design challenges in real time. Your experience and hands-on skill will play a crucial role in leading craft teams to world-class work as well as guiding clients and partners toward successful outcomes. Your fluency in the world of design across brand, motion, and digital helps you lead large scale, integrated teams towards successful outcomes.

You will fully own major digital workstreams, product detail pages (PDPs), and large-scale interactive launches. Operating comfortably within established, robust design systems, you will translate high-level narratives and brand strategy into compelling, innovative web experiences. You are a tastemaker and strategic problem solver capable of navigating ambiguity, prioritizing deadlines, and fostering deep creative trust.

What You’ll Do

• Own Hands-On Craft: Lead from the front by sketching, designing, prototyping, and polishing in Figma. Define industry-leading visual standards, typography, narrative storytelling, and interaction design for high-traffic web pages and product launches.
• Lead Within Design Systems: Creatively push boundaries while maintaining strict consistency and rigor within complex, multi-tiered design systems and digital component libraries.
• Drive Embedded Client Collaboration: Flourish in a highly embedded, fast-paced environment. Collaborate directly and transparently with client creative leads through live co-creation, sprint-based ideation, shared working files, and regular standups.
• Navigate Ambiguity & Prioritize: Operate with high autonomy, translating high-level, ambiguous briefs into clear, phased deliverables under strict launch timelines.
• Team Guidance & Mentorship: Provide creative direction and support to the team. Elevate junior and mid-level talent through actionable feedback, design critiques, and structured mentorship.
• Manage Deadlines & Production: Partner with project and client leadership to ensure workstreams exceed aesthetic standards while delivering strictly on schedule.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of proven experience in digital visual design, web design, and interactive work for world-class brands, including 2+ years in a design leadership or lead practitioner capacity.
• Exceptional Portfolio: A proven track record demonstrating world-class digital craft, narrative web design, PDPs/e-commerce experiences, interactive storytelling, and sophisticated typographic hierarchy.
• Design Systems Mastery: Deep expertise designing within and scaling robust, multi-brand digital design systems in Figma (auto-layout, nested components, design tokens, responsive variants).
• Embedded Client Fluency: Extensive experience presenting work and working directly with enterprise client creative leads and cross-functional partners.
• Agility & Autonomous Ownership: High comfort level working in rapid sprint cycles, live collaborative files, and fast-moving launch cadences.
• Time Zone Flexibility: Ability to work core hours aligned with Pacific Time (PT) (candidates located across US time zones welcome, provided they can flex to PT hours when needed).
• Tools: Mastery of Figma and Adobe Creative Suite; familiarity with modern collaboration tools (Slack, Google Workspace).

Benefits

• Healthcare, Dental, and Vision coverage
• 401K plan, plus matching
• PTO
• Paid Company Holidays
• Parental Leave

Company Description

DEPT® is a Growth Invention company built to help the world’s most ambitious brands grow faster. Operating at the intersection of technology and marketing, our 4,000+ specialists deliver growth invention across Brand & Media, Experience, Commerce, CRM, and Technology & Data. We’re 50|50 tech and marketing, partner-led, and first to move. Clients include Google, Lufthansa, Coach, eBay, and OpenAI.