Associate Design Director

Critical Mass; Scotland; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading creative agency in Scotland seeks an Associate Design Director to lead digital design initiatives. You will guide a large creative team and develop client relationships, focusing on performance marketing and visual design. Requires 8+ years of experience in design leadership and a strong grasp of design systems. We offer a collaborative environment with benefits like parental leave and flexible schedules. Join us in inspiring others and achieving professional growth.

Benefits

Global maternity and parental leave

Competitive benefits packages

Diversity and Inclusion Board

Qualifications

• 8+ years of design, marketing, or communications experience.
• 4+ years’ experience with design systems.
• Strong understanding of performance-based social creative.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of a digital design system.
• Drive strategies addressing customer needs.
• Foster a creative culture within the design team.

Skills

Visual communication

Design leadership

Collaboration

Storytelling through video

Education

4+ years visual communication education

Tools

Figma

Job description

As anAssociateDesign Director,you bring a strong creative opinion, informed by strategy and past resultsto lead performance marketing initiatives. Balancing visual language, narrative structure and design process, you develop client and interagency relationships 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 campaign development, brand development, 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
• 4+ years’ Design Systems 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

What We Offer:

• Global maternity and parental leave
• Competitive benefits packages
• Vacation, compassionate leave, wellness days, and flex days
• Access to online services for families and new parents
• Early Dismissal Friday’s (off at 3:00 PM local time every Friday)
• Diversity and Inclusion Board with 13 affinity groups
• Internal learning and development programs
• Enterprise‑wide employee discounts

Our new hires & employees are the future of our organization, and we want to set you up for long‑term success. In an effort to do so, we expect our team to work from an office a minimum of 3 days a week.

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.comand us.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.

If U.S. based: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams#avoid

If Canada based: https://www.canada.ca/en/services/finance/consumer-affairs.html

If U.K. based: https://www.gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights

If Costa Rica based: https://www.consumo.go.cr/educacion_consumidor/consejos_practicos.aspx