Head of Brand & Creative

Rowden; Bristol; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A progressive engineering company in Bristol seeks a Head of Design to guide a unified creative direction across the brand and products. The ideal candidate will manage visual identity, creative direction, and cross-functional design coherence. This role offers the opportunity to shape the global creative identity while ensuring high standards across all creative disciplines. A flexible, hybrid working environment is available.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Diverse team environment

Encouragement of applicants with disabilities

Qualifications

• Proven track record in leading creative teams.
• Portfolio showcasing strong creative direction across various media.
• Ability to articulate concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the visual identity of Rowden.
• Set creative direction for campaigns and product launches.
• Translate the Rowden story into a differentiated narrative.

Skills

Creative direction

Strong visual communication

Collaboration

Design principles

Curiosity about products

Job description

Head of Design

Department: Miscellaneous

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Bristol, UK

Description

We're building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience.

Rowden presents a rare opportunity for an ambitious creative leader. We are a fast-growing challenger brand with a clear vision and a high bar for how we show up in the world. We're obsessive about brand design, narrative clarity, and the craft of visual communication. We want someone who will take full ownership of that creative standard every day.

Headquartered in Bristol (UK), we combine modern engineering methods with cutting‑edge commercial technology to create adaptable, mission‑critical systems. We focus on solving the tough challenges that others overlook, ensuring our customers can operate effectively in an ever‑changing world.

This role is for someone ambitious, conceptually strong, and motivated by great design and storytelling. You will shape the global creative identity of Rowden, evolve a brand with real momentum, and build the creative partnerships and talent needed as we scale. You will ensure creative coherence across the entire company - from industrial and product design through to the UI/UX of software surfaces, and into every piece of content, demo, and customer‑facing experience. If you want ownership, pace, and the opportunity to build a distinctive, high‑integrity, brand with real impact, this is the role.

More information about security clearance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetti...

Key areas of responsibility

As Rowden's Head of Design, you'll guide a unified creative direction across our brand, our products, and the experiences that support them. You'll be responsible for driving coherence and quality across every major creative discipline. You will be responsible for:

1. Visual identity and design systems: Owning and evolving Rowden's visual identity - shaping typography, colour, layout, motion, and upholding standards for the overall expression of the brand.
2. Creative direction: Setting the creative direction for campaigns, product launches, photography, film, demos, and case studies, maintaining a clear point of view and high standards.
3. Narrative development: Translating the Rowden story into a visually compelling, differentiated narrative across products, services, and markets.
4. Cross‑functional design coherence: Ensuring a consistent creative system across industrial and product design, software UI/UX, documentation, demos, digital experiences, and marketing. Maintaining and improving internal processes for workflow, templates, file structure, and project management.
5. Brand and product design architecture: Building the design architecture that keeps every discipline aligned as we scale, supporting engineering, product, marketing, and executive teams.
6. Creative ecosystem management: Establishing and leading a trusted network of designers, photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, and animators, acting as the quality gate for all external work.
7. Governance and quality assurance: Turning loose ideas into sharp briefs, managing timelines, and ensuring disciplined execution with no off‑brand output.
8. Technical design literacy: Providing precise, informed feedback across design, motion, photography, UX, and web to enable high‑quality, efficient delivery.

Key skills, experience and behaviours

You will be hands‑on and close to the work, shaping the detail as much as the big picture. You bring high personal standards and stay resourceful when the brief is loose or the path isn't obvious. You think in stories, apply sharp editorial judgement, and always push for clarity over noise. When priorities shift - and they will - you stay steady and resilient. Above all, you're focused on the end user and take real pride in producing work that represents a company with purpose.

You'll have:

• A proven track record creating and leading world‑class creative, whether in‑house or agency‑side.
• A portfolio showing strong creative direction across digital, print, product, technical communication, demos, and marketing.
• The ability to originate clear, ambitious ideas and drive them through to precise, high‑quality delivery.
• Strong visual communication skills and the ability to articulate concepts clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• A collaborative working style, building strong relationships with engineering, product, sales, and marketing teams to deliver creative that supports growth in target markets.
• Curiosity about our products, users, and markets, and a commitment to continuous learning and creative differentiation.
• Deep command of design principles and the capability to guide multidisciplinary teams to a consistently high standard.
• A commitment to producing distinctive work that raises the bar and scales across products, markets, and channels.

The process

There will be an initial screening call, followed by a video interview and then a final face‑to‑face interview. Candidates who progress past the screening call will receive access to a data room with our style guide and current brand assets to help inform later discussions.

Working at Rowden

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!

We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid‑working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part‑time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.

Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.

Finally, if you feel that you don't meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we'd still love to hear from you!