Design Director (AI)

Location: New York, New York, United States; NY-based preferred

Company

An AI-native agency developing brands, products, interfaces, systems, interactions, and experiences.

What you will do

• Raise the standard for craft, taste, originality, and design quality across the agency's work.
• Partner with the ECD to shape creative direction, lead the design team, and build design capabilities.
• Stay close to the work by sketching, designing, prototyping, and critiquing alongside the team.
• Develop designers through precise feedback, mentoring, and support for individual creative points of view.
• Lead multidisciplinary projects with engineers, creative technologists, strategists, writers, and producers.
• Lead client conversations, explain complex ideas, defend creative decisions, and communicate new possibilities.

Requirements

• Around 8+ years of experience in design, including leading significant creative work and mentoring designers.
• Portfolio demonstrating exceptional design craft and conceptual thinking.
• Experience across multiple areas such as brand, product, experience, technology, or communication design.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary projects from early concept through execution.
• Hands-on experience with generative AI, prototyping, and emerging creative technology.
• Strong understanding of typography, composition, interaction, motion, hierarchy, narrative, and detail.

Nice to have

• Experience with agents, generative interfaces, adaptive systems, and human-machine interaction.
• Experience using tools that enable designers to work directly with code and models.

Culture & Benefits

• Small design team working in a rapidly evolving AI environment.
• Encouragement to experiment with AI as a creative and design medium.
• Focus on character, emotion, cultural relevance, and human-centered technology.
• Opportunities to work across disciplines and develop new approaches without established playbooks.