Design Director

Critical Mass; Calgary; On-site; CAD 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading creative agency in Calgary seeks a Design Director to lead performance marketing and design initiatives. You will manage a creative team, develop client relations, and communicate innovative concepts effectively. The ideal candidate will have over 8 years in design leadership within agency environments and expertise in areas like UX/UI and design systems. This role offers a collaborative culture that fosters professional growth and creativity.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in design, marketing, or communications interactive work and design leadership.
• Experience in a lead design role within a project-based strategic, creative, or technical agency.
• Solid understanding of storytelling using video, including editing and motion design.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of a digital design system and iterate on new design components.
• Be a hands-on creative lead to bring out the best in the design team.
• Drive strategies to address customer needs across digital channels.
• Provide regular team leadership and constructive feedback on all accounts.

Skills

Visual storytelling

Leading creative teams

Performance marketing

UX and UI principles

Design system development

Education

Visual communication education or equivalent experience

Tools

Figma

Job description

As a Design Director, Art you couple a strong creative voice with strategy and product thinking to lead performance marketing and design framework initiatives. Balancing creative thinking, political acumen, and organizational/process savvy, you develop solid client relations by clearly communicating and justifying concepts. Visual and systematic design woven together with a performance lens is your bread and butter—but you’ve also got strong working knowledge of experience design, brand development, interactive commerce, creative and product processes, UX and UI principles, and scalable design system development—all essential in your role.

You’re looking to hone your management skills directing the collaborative efforts of a large creative team. And the environment you build for your team fosters professional growth and inspires others to exceed expectations. Most importantly, you embody and embrace our values—to be honest, inspired, driven, passionate and real—in everything you do.

You Will

• Lead the design of a digital design system, both building from established patterns and iterating on new design components to evolve the system
• Be a hands‑on creative lead with the desire and capability to bring the best out of a design team.
• Build and maintain creative culture within the design team
• Understand skillsets and personalities of team members to find areas for opportunity or improvement
• Drive the strategies that address customer needs and business goals across digital channels.
• Contribute creative solutions and innovations that strengthen both the agency brand and market leadership position.
• Develop & deliver innovative proposals to capture both account growth and new business opportunities.
• Promote continuous improvement and accountability by driving Creative discipline and operational excellence and lending industry vertical expertise.
• Perform strategic account planning with senior management in vertical marketing groups.
• Conceive and create experience design solutions that fulfill strategic business objectives.
• Be just as comfortable in the work as leading it. Figma is an extension of your creativity.
• Effectively communicate creative ideas and strategies to all project stakeholders.
• Lead and partner with multidisciplinary teams, including all creative disciplines, technology, planning, account and program managers, partners, clients and more.
• Provide regular team leadership and constructive feedback on all accounts.
• Develop, monitor, and modify the business unit creative department staffing strategies and plans, including team composition, performance, skills, training, and mentoring.
• Develop, implement, and monitor quality standards across all creative artifacts and deliverables.
• Continuously improve Creative methods, problem‑solving models, and best practices.
• Proactively manage the success of production scope, schedules, and budgets.
• Engage and inform practice leads from media, technology, marketing science, usability, and quality assurance to maximize results and ensure satisfaction.
• Support and lead Human Resource initiatives with a focus on performance management.
• Understand, embrace, and communicate corporate mission and values.

You Have

• 4+ years visual communication education or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years design, marketing, or communications interactive work and design leadership experience.
• Experience in a lead design role within a project‑based strategic, creative, or technical agency environment
• Substantial experience managing and bringing to life performance social creative
• A solid understanding of storytelling with the use of video – editing, pacing, motion design excellence.
• Passion for design and eagerness to collaborate with other creative people.
• Solid understanding and appreciation for the distinction between creative expression and commercial reality.

Critical Mass is an equal opportunity employer. Critical Mass uses artificial intelligence in our recruitment process to enhance job postings, filter keywords during the review of prospective candidates, and, in some cases, transcribe interviews with our recruiters. Human review remains central to the process, and all hiring decisions are ultimately made by our team.

The Critical Mass Talent Acquisition team will only communicate from email addresses that use the URLs criticalmass.com, omc.comandus.greenhouse-mail.io. We will not use apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Google Hangouts for communicating with you. We will never ask you to send us money, technology, or anything else to work for our company. If you believe you are the victim of a scam, please review your local government consumer protections guidance and reach out to them directly.