Senior Director of Creative

Role Overview

As Senior Director of Creative, you'll set the creative standard for an agency where craft is a given but the work exists to drive change. You'll oversee our core creative disciplines (design, experience strategy, brand strategy) and keep our work moving missions forward. Our work lives at the intersection of brand, design, and digital experience strategy, and we want someone credible in all.

This senior leadership role is focused on craft, creative vision, and team leadership. You'll define the bar, build a cohesive creative leadership team, and shape how we deliver. When creative ambition, team capacity, and business needs pull against each other, your job is to protect the quality of the work and find solutions that don't force the team to choose between doing it well and getting it done.

This is an opportunity to build on top of our existing portfolio and established reputation, and for you to stake out a vision for creative work at Wide Eye as an independent and entrepreneurial leader on our team.

This is a full-time, U.S. remote role reporting to the Senior Managing Director.

Core Responsibilities

• Vision & Standards
• • Establish company-wide standards for how we leverage visual design, brand strategy, and product thinking in service of our mission-driven clients
• • Define quality benchmarks and ensure consistency across client engagements
• • Lead creative strategy on select major projects, translating organizational missions and project goals into compelling solutions
• • Push the agency forward in creative style, emerging tools, and our approach to building human-centric digital experiences
• • Champion how AI and modern tools can enhance the creative process, and how they raise the bar of taste and judgement — growing our impact without compromising craft or losing the humanity from our work
• • Provide final input on high-stakes or escalated work, stepping in when alignment, quality, or strategic clarity is needed, as a backstop for the team, not a default gatekeeper
• • Shape how we present and showcase our work, including case studies and project narratives, as a core part of our process

Team Leadership, Management, & Culture

• Mentor and develop our full creative team across design, experience strategy, and brand strategy.
• Directly manage our Director of Creative Operations and Associate Director of

Experience

• Strategy.

• Cultivate cohesion across disciplines so brand, design, and UX work as one

• Identify capability gaps across creative disciplines and advocate for staffing needs in collaboration with direct reports

• Drive recruiting, retention, and career development for creative talent

• Foster collaboration between creative, accounts, and project management

• Bring Wide Eye's values to life through your leadership and creative approach

• Build creative capability that lives in systems and standards, not only in individual people

• Business Partnership

• As this role grows, there is a clear path toward joining Wide Eye's executive team, contributing to business strategy, agency positioning, and new service development

• Partner with company leadership on department budgeting, capacity planning, and profitability, including tradeoffs around scope, staffing, and prioritization to protect quality and margins

• Support and occasionally lead new business efforts, contributing to proposals, informing pricing strategy, and presenting to prospects

• Champion creative excellence in business terms, winning work on craft and client outcomes

• Serve as senior counsel on complex client challenges and partner with accounts on client relationship strategy

• Stay informed on agency trends and the market landscape

• Represent Wide Eye publicly through thought leadership, speaking, and networking in our communities

• What Success Looks Like

• Impact: Our work drives measurable outcomes for clients and earns industry recognition.

• Innovation: We push the boundaries of creative expression, build human-first experiences, and lead trends rather than follow them.

• Team Cohesion: Discipline leads operate as a unified, multidisciplinary creative leadership team, not siloed departments.

• Building Capacity: Capability gaps close while senior talent gets the room to delegate, grow, and think bigger.

• Quality Consistency: Deliverables meet our standards regardless of project size or timeline.

• Clear Direction: Project teams know what "good" looks like and when work is ready to ship.

• Healthy Economics: Great work is delivered profitably, and the team has the tools, processes, and standards to make that the norm.

• In Your First Year

• Building from Wide Eye’s established reputation, define an updated, shared creative quality standard that project teams can reference and apply independently

• Working closely with a designer-founder to onboard to, learn, and begin to reshape what makes Wide Eye “Wide Eye”.

• Take ownership of creative leadership across active projects

• Bring clarity to team structure, career paths, and decision-making authority across creative disciplines

• Experience & Qualifications

• Required

• 10+ years creative leadership in agency environments, with 2+ years managing other directors

• Deep expertise in a combination of brand strategy and identity, interactive design, and experience strategy, with a portfolio that demonstrates leadership across multiple creative disciplines

• Demonstrated fluency with AI and modern production tools, and a point of view on how they can enhance the human creative process

• Ability to balance creative ambition with client needs and business realities

• Strong presentation skills and comfort with executive-level client conversations

• Preferred Background

• Background in social impact or advocacy; experience with nonprofits, research orgs, membership orgs, or campaigns is a plus

• Understanding of accessibility and inclusive design

• History of creative award recognition and thought leadership

• Qualities We're Looking For

• High emotional intelligence; leads with empathy and builds a culture where people do their best work

• Craft credibility that earns the trust of designers and strategists even without being an expert in every discipline

• Decisive about quality but genuinely collaborative; holds a strong perspective while bringing people along

• A builder's mindset; energized by creating structure and standards in a growing organization, not inheriting a finished playbook

• Comfort navigating the tension between creative excellence and business realities

• Candor in all directions; as comfortable pushing back on executive decisions as giving direct feedback to their team

• Commitment to building diverse, inclusive teams and to creating positive social change through creative work

• What We're Not Looking For

• Pure visionaries without management experience

• Operations managers without creative expertise

• Leaders who prioritize awards over client outcomes

• Anyone comfortable with "good enough" when missions are at stake

• Purely sales- or business-driven leaders who compromise creative standards to close deals

• Starting Salary: $175k - $200k (depending on experience and qualifications)

• Our Commitment to You

• Wide Eye is committed to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. We strongly encourage candidates from historically excluded communities to apply. We believe that your lived experience is a valuable asset in helping our clients create meaningful change in the world.

• Wide Eye is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace for all. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and/or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state or federal law or local ordinance.