Creative Director

Bullish; New York (NY); On-site; USD 228,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

Job summary

Bullish seeks a Creative Director to lead the next chapter of brand expression across crypto-finance and media. This hands‑on, high‑impact role blends creative vision with disciplined craft across brands, audiences, products and technology.

Based in NYC, the role is onsite at the office at least four days per week, and offers a strong base salary with bonus opportunities and performance incentives.

Qualifications

• 10+ years leading brand and digital creative at a strong studio, agency or in‑house team.
• Proven ability to build and evolve brand systems that scale across audiences, products, and touchpoints.
• Editorial taste and a producer mindset. Strong judgment around typography, pacing, imagery, sequence, and curation.
• Mastery of Figma and Adobe Creative Suite, with strong digital design fluency and the production discipline you would want the team to adopt.
• Outstanding presentation, visual communication, and storytelling skills.
• A clear point of view on craft and where design is going, and a collaborative approach that prioritizes the end viewer/user experience.
• Strong intuition for motion language, timing, and animation principles, and the ability to direct motion through storyboards or assets.
• Ability to direct and elevate other designers, giving smart critique and steering teams toward strong solutions.
• Comfort operating across a global, cross‑functional organization (US, Cayman, London, Hong Kong).

Responsibilities

• Lead the creative expression for our brands across marketing, events, business, editorial, web, and media surfaces.
• Steward and evolve the brand systems as they mature, deepening visual language, motion, and imagery across touchpoints.
• Develop opportunities for brand motion by establishing how brand moments move and show up across digital, social, product, and events.
• Direct and contribute to creative output at the project and program level guiding designers and partners through roadmapping, briefing, ideation, critique, and delivery.
• Champion a modern, exploratory creative practice, experimenting with AI workflows and emergent tools and translating into useful applications.
• Keep brand systems moving by developing assets, templates, and guides for teams to execute at high level.
• Partner cross-functionally with Marketing, Media, Product, Events, Business, and executive leadership to solve problems with aesthetic ambition.
• Deliver hands-on, 360° creative across digital and product marketing, campaigns, collateral, events, research reports, social, and product launches.
• Support group-level creative needs including office branding, internal communications, swag and other services.
• Inspire and elevate the team, modeling refinement, curiosity, prioritization, and accountable execution.

Skills

Brand leadership

Brand systems

Stakeholder management

Motion direction

Typography

Editorial taste

Presentations

Collaboration

Design critique

Team mentorship

Global teams

Tools

Figma

Adobe Creative Suite

After Effects

Job description

About Bullish

Bullish is an institutionally focused global digital asset platform that provides market infrastructure and information services. These include:

Bullish Exchange – a regulated and institutionally focused digital assets spot and derivatives exchange, integrating a high-performance central limit order book matching engine with automated market making to provide deep and predictable liquidity. Bullish Exchange is regulated in Germany, Hong Kong, and Gibraltar. CoinDesk Indices – a collection of tradable proprietary and single-asset benchmarks and indices that track the performance of digital assets for global institutions in the digital assets and traditional finance industries. CoinDesk Data - a broad suite of digital assets market data and analytics, providing real-time insights into prices, trends, and market dynamics. CoinDesk Insights – a digital asset media and events provider and operator of Coindesk.com, a digital media platform that covers news and insights about digital assets, the underlying markets, policy, and blockchain technology.

Reports To

VP, Creative

The Opportunity

We are seeking a Creative Director to lead the next chapter of brand expression and creative execution. This is a hands‑on, high‑impact role that pairs creative vision with disciplined craft across an ecosystem of brands spanning crypto‑finance and media. You will set an ambitious creative bar, bring bold ideas to life, and help shape how our brands evolve across audiences, products, content, and technology.

This role is based in NYC and will be required to work onsite at our office a minimum of 4 days per week.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the creative expression for our brands across marketing, events, business, editorial, web, and media surfaces. Set an ambitious bar for craft and originality.
• Steward and evolve the brand systems as they mature, deepening visual language, motion, and imagery across touchpoints, supporting new audiences and products, and rewiring the brands for the AI era.
• Develop opportunities for brand motion by establishing how brand moments move, transition, and show up across digital, social, product, and events.
• Direct and contribute to creative output at the project and program level by guiding designers and marketing partners through roadmapping, briefing, ideation, critique, and delivery.
• Champion a modern, exploratory creative practice, actively experimenting with AI workflows, emerging tools, mediums and design technologies and translating that exploration into useful creative applications.
• Keep the brand systems moving and useful by developing the assets, extensions, templates, and guides teams need to execute at a high level, including brand portals, partner‑facing guides, LLM‑ and connector‑ready brand inputs, and corporate templates.
• Partner cross‑functionally with Marketing, Media, Product, Events, Business, and executive leadership to ensure creative work solves the right problems with aesthetic ambition.
• Deliver hands‑on, 360° creative across the ecosystem, spanning digital and product marketing, campaigns, sales and business collateral, event production, research reports, social, multimedia, product lines and launches.
• Support group‑level creative needs including office branding, internal communications, swag and other company‑wide creative services.
• Inspire and elevate the team, modeling rigorous refinement, curiosity, prioritization, and accountable execution while helping build a culture where craft is the standard.

What You Have

• 10+ years leading brand and digital creative at a strong studio, agency or in‑house team, with a portfolio that sets a high bar for visual ambition.
• Proven ability to build and evolve brand systems that scale across audiences, products, and touchpoints.
• Track record of making ambitious work happen without a big team behind you.
• Editorial taste and a producer mindset. Strong judgment around typography, pacing, imagery, sequence, and curation, paired with the ability to own the process, solve problems, manage stakeholders and deliver.
• Mastery of Figma and Adobe Creative Suite, with strong digital design fluency and the production discipline and file etiquette you would want the team to adopt.
• Outstanding presentation, visual communication, and storytelling skills.
• A clear point of view on craft and where design is going, and a collaborative approach that prioritizes the end‑viewer/user experience.
• Strong intuition for motion language, timing, and animation principles, and the ability to direct motion through storyboards, key art and asset playbooks. Hands‑on experience with After Effects, Rive, Lottie or similar is a significant advantage.
• Ability to direct and elevate other designers, giving smart critique, raising the level of the work and steering teams toward strong solutions.
• Comfort operating across a global, cross‑functional organization, including teams in the U.S., Cayman, London, and Hong Kong.

Bonus Points For

• Crypto, financial services, or media brands.
• Leading or contributing to brand refreshes and multi‑brand portfolios.
• Editorial or publishing‑tier design background.
• 3D, WebGL, Framer, Midjourney, and generative or prompt‑based tooling.
• Proficiency with project management tools.

Bullish US LLC & CoinDesk Inc. are committed to offering competitive compensation and benefits. The anticipated base salary for this position is $228,000 - $255,000 + discretionary annual target bonus + performance incentives/benefits. The offered salary will be reflective of job‑related knowledge, skills and commensurate experience.

Bullish is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are fast evolving and striving towards being a globally‑diverse community. With integrity at our core, our success is driven by a talented team of individuals and the different perspectives they are encouraged to bring to work every day.