Creative Studio Lead: Design & Brand

Great Journeys New Zealand | KiwiRail; Wellington; On-site; NZD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

KiwiRail is seeking a Studio Design Lead to shape the in-house Passenger Design Studio across Interislander and Great Journeys New Zealand. This senior, hands-on role blends high‑level creative direction with team leadership to deliver across digital, print, events and physical experiences.

You'll mentor two Designers, manage workflow, ensure accessibility and brand alignment, and collaborate across Marketing, Product, Customer Experience, Digital, Revenue and Operations to land customer‑centric

Qualifications

• Significant senior design and creative experience across digital, social, campaign, print and physical customer experiences.
• Strong brand thinking and the ability to translate brand strategy and customer propositions into distinctive, consistent creative work.
• Excellent creative judgement and an eye for detail, craft and consistency. You know what great looks like and can help others get there.
• Experience balancing hands-on senior creative work with leading, coaching and developing a design team.
• Experience helping a creative team mature its capability, standards and ways of working.
• Strong conceptual and visual problem-solving skills, with the ability to turn ambiguity into a clear brief and creative direction.
• A collaborative style and experience working across Marketing, Product, Customer Experience, Digital, Commercial and operational teams.
• An understanding of creative effectiveness, with curiosity about customer insight, feedback and performance and how these can improve future work.
• Confidence challenging briefs and ideas constructively while building strong stakeholder relationships.
• Experience across evolving creative formats and tools, including video, motion, digital and emerging AI-enabled workflows.
• Strong production knowledge and attention to detail, ensuring creative work is accurate, accessible, consistent, fit for purpose and meets quality standards.
• A relevant tertiary qualification within the creative and design space, or equivalent professional experience.

Responsibilities

• Personally, designing and delivering complex, high-priority work across digital, social, print, websites, events, presentations, signage and physical formats.
• Leading the daily operation of the Passenger Design Studio and developing two Designers.
• Providing creative direction, feedback, and quality assurance across studio output.
• Managing studio intake, briefs, workflow, priorities, capacity, approvals, files and delivery commitments.
• Ensuring creative work meets customer, channel, accessibility, production and approved brand requirements.
• Determining when work should be completed internally or supported by external creative and production specialists.
• Managing approved suppliers, production schedules, quality, costs and delivery.
• Improving studio efficiency through templates, reusable assets, digital tools, automation and approved AI-enabled ways of working.
• Great creative work here is collaborative. You'll work across Marketing, Product, Customer Experience, Digital, Revenue and Operations, understanding different perspectives and helping teams land on solutions that work for the customer, the brand and the business.
• You'll be a trusted creative partner to teams across Passenger, helping stakeholders turn an opportunity, problem or sometimes ambiguous idea into a clear brief and compelling creative response.
• Keeping stakeholders informed about priorities, timing, decisions, risks and delivery.

Skills

Senior design leadership

Brand strategy

Creative direction

Team coaching

Cross-functional collaboration

Digital, social, print experience

Education

Bachelor's degree in design or related field

Job description

KiwiRail is seeking a Studio Design Lead to shape the in-house Passenger Design Studio across Interislander and Great Journeys New Zealand. This senior, hands-on role blends high‑level creative direction with team leadership to deliver across digital, print, events and physical experiences.

You'll mentor two Designers, manage workflow, ensure accessibility and brand alignment, and collaborate across Marketing, Product, Customer Experience, Digital, Revenue and Operations to land customer‑centric