Creative Director

NinjaTrader; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 110,000 - 221,000; Full time

Job summary

NinjaTrader is seeking a Creative Director to own how the company looks, sounds, and feels across every marketing surface. This senior role reports directly to the CMO and will set direction for a visual identity that reflects a dynamic, growing brand.

You will lead a small in-house design team, partner with Product Design and performance marketing, and ensure a consistent experience from first impression to funded account. A hands-on leader with fintech or trading experience is preferred.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in brand and creative roles with leadership experience.
• Portfolio focused on systems design.
• Strong storytelling across campaigns and performance creative.
• Hands-on approach; stay involved in work.

Responsibilities

• Operationalize and extend brand identity system across surfaces.
• Build and scale the marketing design system for campaigns and web.
• Direct integrated campaigns from brief to launch (video, social, etc.).
• Lead a small in-house design team and manage agencies.
• Collaborate with Product Design and performance marketing.

Skills

Brand experience

Team leadership

Portfolio systems

Storytelling range

Brand campaigns

Hands-on leadership

AI tooling

People management

Job description

JOIN US ON OUR MISSION TO BECOME THE #1 RETAIL TRADING PLATFORM IN THE WORLD

Welcome to the dynamic world of NinjaTrader! As an industry-leading trading platform and futures broker, we're empowering traders to take control of their financial destiny. How do we do it? We provide cutting-edge products and services that enhance the trading journey. Whether a seasoned pro or just starting out, NinjaTrader equips traders with award-winning software and brokerage services to navigate the world's leading financial markets with confidence.

Our growth story is nothing short of exhilarating. Since 2003, NinjaTrader has been dedicated to understanding and supporting traders on their journey toward trading triumph. Through those efforts, our user base has grown to over 2 million users and we have become the number one rated futures brokerage worldwide.

But we're not stopping there. We're constantly evolving, pushing boundaries, and modernizing the futures industry. Our commitment to innovation means users will always have access to dynamic tools, real-time support, and a community of like-minded traders.

So, why work at NinjaTrader? Here, you're not just part of a team; you're part of a movement. We empower employees to reach new heights in their careers by providing a dynamic culture focused on social connection, professional development, and employee recognition initiatives. Sounds too good to be true? Take it from our employees.

The team

NinjaTrader is a futures-focused brokerage offering low commissions, award-winning trading platforms, and a suite of customizable tools for active traders. The platform delivers integrated multi-device trading across desktop, web, and mobile, with access to thousands of third‑party trading apps and add‑ons.

The opportunity

NinjaTrader is hiring a Creative Director to own how the company looks, sounds and feels across every marketing surface a consumer encounters. This is the senior‑most creative role in the marketing organization, reporting directly to the CMO.

Our brand strategy and positioning are sharp, but the visual expression lags behind.. This is an opportunity to level up our visual identity to reflect the dynamic and growing nature of the brands we have in market. Then your job is to make it real — operationalize it, extend it into the places it doesn't yet reach, and defend it as volume scales. After that, you own the creative standard for the group.

This is a hands‑on leadership role. You will set direction, and you will still be in the file. We are not hiring someone to run a review calendar.

Trading is a category of noise: identical charts, identical claims, identical stock photography of men in headsets. The mandate is to make NinjaTrader unmistakable.

In This Role You Will

The marketing identity system

• Operationalize the incoming brand identity system — typography, color, photography and illustration direction, motion language, iconography, layout systems — and extend it into the surfaces it does not yet cover
• Own the marketing design system: build it to scale across campaign, web, lifecycle and partner surfaces, and to hold up when other hands use it
• Establish the governance that keeps the system intact — standards, documentation, review, and the authority to say no
• Act as the final quality gate on brand expression across marketing

Creative output and storytelling

• Concept and direct integrated campaigns from brief to launch — video, social, paid, OOH, sponsorship, events
• Develop the narrative, not just the look. You will shape the story a piece of video tells, then art‑direct the production that delivers it
• Own marketing web and landing page design, including the pages that carry acquisition and conversion volume
• Direct lifecycle and product marketing creative so the experience stays coherent from first impression to funded account
• Stay personally in the work on hero projects — concepting, designing, writing direction, cutting with the editor

Team and partners

• Hire, manage and develop a small in‑house design team; set the critique culture and the standard
• Brief, direct and evaluate agencies, production partners and freelancers; own creative quality of outsourced work
• Build the operating rhythm — briefs, reviews, handoffs — that lets a small team ship at volume
• Grow into broader creative ownership over time, including copy and video production

Cross‑functional leadership

• Partner with Product Design on shared brand guidelines so marketing and platform surfaces stay recognizably the same brand. Product Design owns the product design system; you own the marketing one. The two are deliberately scoped differently and should stay that way
• Work with performance marketing to build creative that is testable, iterable and measured against funnel outcomes
• Operate fluently inside a regulated marketing environment, partnering with compliance early rather than treating review as a downstream tax

What You Bring

• 8+ years of brand and creative experience, with 2+ years leading a team as an ACD, CD or design lead
• A portfolio built on systems, not one‑offs
• Storytelling range — able to develop narrative, not only art‑direct someone else's script
• Range across brand campaign work and performance creative
• A desire to remain hands‑on — actively driven to stay in the work, not just direct it
• Fluency with AI tooling in the creative process
• A track record of managing designers and directing external agencies
• Comfort with performance data

Nice to haves

• Fintech, brokerage, trading, crypto or exchange experience, or genuine curiosity about markets and retail traders
• Experience operationalizing an inherited identity system rather than only building from scratch
• Experience running a marketing design system alongside a separately owned product design system
• Experience in a constrained or regulated environment — finance, healthcare, insurance, pharma or gaming
• Practicing a craft outside the day job — photography, film, writing or illustration
• Agency background plus in‑house leadership experience

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

• Compensation Range: $110.4K - $220.8K