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Job Description
Constructive, a leading social impact strategy and design firm is looking for a new Design Director with deep expertise in UX design for content-rich websites, a skilled eye for visual design, and strong people management skills.
Constructive is a close-knit, committed team of experts who partner with visionary organizations to create greater understanding about the world and help make it a more fair, equitable, and sustainable place. Our culture is built on values that are essential to who we are and how we show up—deeply held beliefs about the importance of empathy, accountability, teamwork, and respect that we look for in everyone who joins our team. If the above sounds a lot like you and you’re passionate about designing great work for purpose-led brands, then please read on.
About the Role
Constructive’s Design Director leads our visual design practice and manages the design team, reporting to our Founder & Creative Director to ensure that the work we co-create with clients is strategically sound, creatively inspired, and highly effective. We are looking for a design leader with exceptional design skills and deep experience in content-rich digital design who knows how to help their team reach new heights and who excels at engaging clients and bringing them along through the design process.
You’ll manage and mentor our designers to help them continuously create stand-out work. You’ll listen to, learn from, and lead clients—facilitating design strategy, presenting work, and providing consultative guidance. You’ll collaborate with Constructive’s strategy, content, and engineering teams to ensure that what we produce delivers results. You will also be a valuable member of Constructive’s management team, helping shape our strategies and practices. And you’ll get continuous leadership mentoring from Constructive’s executive coach to strengthen your leadership and management skills.
Your Core Responsibilities
Here are the primary activities and outcomes that Constructive’s Design Director is accountable for and by which your success and contributions will be measured.
- Produce exceptional design work. You and your team consistently create strategic design with an exceptional level of attention to design fundamentals that meets our standards and continuously sets the bar higher.
- Lead our design team. You manage, mentor, and elevate our design team—inspiring them, strengthening their skills, and continuously coaching them to think through design challenges as they seek greatness in their work.
- Develop design strategies. You develop design strategies in collaboration with Constructive’s team and through client workshops that establish the principles and rationales for how design solutions support brand goals.
- Lead client presentations. You present work persuasively, articulate how design solutions deliver on strategy, and steer critical conversations to balance the need to integrate client feedback with the need to advocate for effective design.
- Collaborate across teams. You work closely with our strategy, content, and engineering teams and with our Creative Director to ensure that design intent is faithfully translated into final deliverables.
- Support resourcing and project health. You make design team assignments, contribute in resourcing meetings, and work with project managers to ensure that design work is tracking to scope, budget, and timeline.
- Build our design team. You secure the talent we need to produce the work that we and our clients expect, identifying talent for our team and building out our pool of freelance consultants.
- Contribute thought leadership. You help our Marketing Lead produce thought leadership on design practices by sharing your ideas so that they can be turned into articles, webinars, and other content marketing.
Things That You’ll Need
- Strong alignment with our core values.
- At least 7 years design experience, primarily in agency settings, and at least 3 years experience actively managing and overseeing a design team.
- A strong eye for visual design fundamentals—typography, color systems, grid theory, and information organization.
- Extensive experience building creatively-inspired brand identities and design systems.
- Significant experience designing large-scale websites—ideally content-rich with significant editorial needs.
- Collaborative leadership capabilities with the ability to manage designers and manage up to the Creative Director.
- Exceptional presentation and speaking skills with the ability to build trust with clients, persuasively articulate ideas without being pushy, and facilitate strategic feedback conversations.
- An allergic reaction to mediocre work, an unrelenting eye for detail, and an insistence that any work we produce meets our highest standards and honors our clients’ trust in us.
Experience with Figma and strong Adobe Creative Suite skills.
- A strong understanding of UX design and wireframing a plus.
What We Offer
We do our best to make sure everyone at Constructive is taken care of with a great mix of salary, benefits and perks, opportunities for professional growth, and significant time off. We expect this position to have a base salary between $120k - $130k (+ additional performance-based compensation) based on experience and value-added skills. In addition to this salary, we offer defined profit sharing, 401K matching, and discretionary performance-based bonuses.
Compensation & PTO
- Ongoing 1-1 Leadership Coaching (typically bi-weekly)
- Defined Annual Profit Sharing Plan
- 401K With Up to 4% Company Match
- Company Sponsored Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
- Discretionary Performance Bonuses
- 3 Weeks Paid Vacation (15 days)
- Paid Vacation From Christmas Eve through New Year's
- Paid 1/2-day Summer Fridays (Approx 16/year)
- Unlimited Wellness/Sick Days
- New Client Bonuses (3% of First 12 Months of New Work You Proactively Bring In)
- Professional Development & Culture
- A Values-Aligned Team That Loves Showing Up for Each Other
- Monthly Virtual Happy Hours & Games
- Feeling Great About Your Work Making the World a Better Place
Our Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion
We believe strongly that diversity is one of our greatest strengths—that the more perspectives we bring to the mix, the better we are as people and the better partner we are for our clients. So, in considering if Constructive is a good fit for you, know that all we care about is that you’re qualified to do the job, share our values, and want to be here. These are the things we’ll be evaluating for every applicant. If you meet those and add to our team’s diversity, all the better.
What happens next?
We'll review candidates on a rolling basis until we find the right person for the role. If you are selected for an interview, here’s what you can expect:
- Experience Interview (30-45 mins)
- Focused Interview with Case Study/Presentation (45-60 mins)
- Reference Interviews