Associate Director, Creative

Notability; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 175,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Comprehensive healthcare for you and a

401k with matching

Lunch stipend (HQ)

Transit stipend

Home workstation reimbursement

ISP stipend

Monthly phone bill stipend

Job summary

Notability is seeking an Associate Director, Creative to set the creative direction for Notability’s market presence and manage the external agency relationship. The role reports to the VP of Marketing and partners with the Brand Lead to keep brand and product expression unified.

You’ll own brand and campaign creative from concept to final delivery, ensuring a high craft bar while guiding the agency and internal teams. Hybrid work in San Francisco with on-site 2 days a week.

Qualifications

• 6–8 years in brand, creative, or integrated marketing.
• Proven track record managing external creative agencies.
• Experienced brief writer translating business objectives into creative direction.
• Strong creative instincts linking decisions to business outcomes.
• Fluency across brand identity, campaign creative, social/content, with cohesion.
• Experience collaborating with paid performance teams and evolving creative requirements.
• Cross-functional leadership with design teams to align visual identity.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve creative direction: visual identity, tone, expression across channels.
• Translate goals into clear creative concepts and ensure brand consistency.
• Scale the brand identity system across future channels and media.
• Partner with Design to unify brand, marketing, and product expression.
• Own day-to-day relationship with external agency; write briefs and direct work.
• Review output, set priorities, and maintain quality bar.
• Lead creative development for ads, landing pages, launches, campaigns.
• Maintain feedback loop between creative output and performance data.
• Push new formats, motion, and tech to shape Notability communications.
• Own and evolve brand system across marketing channels; define scalable templates.

Skills

Brand management

Creative leadership

Agency management

Brief writing

Cross-functional leadership

Strategic thinking

Brand identity

Paid media collaboration

Team collaboration

Creative direction

Job description

Join Notability and shape the future of learning.We’re building the next generation of tools designed not just to capture notes, but to fundamentally improve how people learn, think, and collaborate. Our app brings the natural expressiveness of paper into the digital age, empowering millions of students, educators, and professionals worldwide to organize their ideas, deepen their understanding, and achieve their goals. Our mission is simple:we help you learn.

As part of our team, you’ll help create experiences driven by empathy, exceptional design, and the belief that great ideas can come from anywhere—including you. Come help us make learning better for everyone.

Notability is building its brand function from the ground up, and this role is central to that. As Associate Director, Creative, you'll set the creative direction for how Notability shows up in market and own the external agency relationship that brings the creative to life. You’ll work closely with our Brand Lead - who owns creator programs, brand partnerships, and activations, and report directly to the VP of Marketing.

This is a role for someone who thinks strategically but stays close to the work - you'll be in the details of every campaign, ad, and landing page, holding the creative bar and keeping the agency accountable to it.

What You’ll Own:

Brand & Creative Strategy

• Define and evolve Notability's creative direction: visual identity, tone, and expression across marketing channels.
• Translate business and campaign goals into clear creative concepts, and ensure consistency across every brand-facing touchpoint.
• Ensure the brand identity system scales across future channels, campaigns, and media.
• Partner closely with the Director of Design to keep brand, marketing, and product expression unified, jointly shaping the visual language they share.

Agency Management

• Own the day-to-day relationship with our external creative agency.
• Write creative briefs that translate campaign goals and brand strategy into clear, actionable direction for the agency.
• Direct the work, review and approve creative output, and manage priorities and sequencing. The agency produces; you set the bar and hold it.

Campaign Creative

• Lead creative development for ads, landing pages, product launches, and brand campaigns, from concept through final delivery.
• Own the feedback loop between creative output and performance data, across both internal teams and the external agency.
• Push new creative formats, motion, and technologies as a direction-setter for how Notability communicates and engages.

Brand System

• Own and evolve Notability's brand system (including visual identity, voice, and creative principles) across all marketing and communication channels.
• Define the templates and systems that make brand output scalable and consistent, including for channels owned by other team members.

What You Bring:

• 6–8 years in brand, creative, or integrated marketing, with meaningful time in a consumer or DTC context
• Proven track record managing external creative agencies: directing, reviewing, and holding a high craft bar across deliverables
• Experienced brief writer. You can translate a business objective into a creative direction a team can actually execute against
• Strong creative instincts with the ability to articulate rationale to non-designers and connect creative decisions to business outcomes
• Fluency across brand identity, campaign creative, and social/content, with the judgment to keep them cohesive
• Experience collaborating with paid performance teams and keeping up with evolving creative requirements across paid platforms
• Experience in cross-functional leadership with design teams, including bringing a shared visual identity to life alongside a peer design leader
• Comfortable operating without a fully established playbook. This function is still being built

For this position we are targeting a base pay between $175K - $220k. Actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

This role follows a hybrid model, with a minimum of two days onsite at our downtown San Francisco office and flexibility to work remotely from home the rest of the week.

How We Work

Each member of our team contributes to all parts of our products. We trust each other to make decisions independently while also considering our common goals and values. We share ideas openly, and we collaborate across disciplines to ensure that our decisions make sense from all perspectives.

When We Work

We actively promote work-life balance. Our schedules are flexible, our hybrid policy supports remote work when it makes sense, and we have a “as long as you get your work done” approach to time off.

Why You’d Love Working Here

We work in downtown SF near Market Street, just a short walk from two BART/Muni stations. Our office has height-adjustable desks to help us stay limber, spacious conference rooms for both small and large team meetings, and a well-stocked kitchen full of goodies to enjoy. Our team is growing, collaborative and down to earth. We want everyone to do their best work and find passion in what they do.

• Competitive compensation that includes base salary, bonuses and profit sharing
• Equity Awards in the form of Stock Options
• Comprehensive healthcare fully covered for you and your family including medical, dental, and vision
• Flexible work and vacation schedules
• 401k with matching contributions
• Matching gifts to nonprofits
• Lunch Stipend (When Working from HQ)
• Public transit stipend
• Home workstation reimbursement
• ISP stipend
• Monthly phone bill stipend

Notability is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. All aspects of employment are decided on the basis of merit, qualifications, and business needs. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.