Creative Director

Engine; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 158,000 - 218,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Equity/Variable pay eligibility

Competitive compensation

Job summary

Engine is seeking a bold creative leader to own the end-to-end AI-assisted creative engine, shaping workflows, guardrails, and scalable systems that produce high-volume, on-brand work.

You’ll lead a team of designers, editors, and AI specialists, partnering with Brand to drive experimentation and ensure fast, high-quality output across events, digital, and campaigns in a hybrid/remote environment.

Qualifications

• Experience leading creative direction with measurable impact.
• Portfolio spanning experiential and digital work.
• Hands-on fluency with generative AI and creative tech tools.

Responsibilities

• Design and own the end-to-end AI-assisted creative engine and QA systems.
• Experiment with emergent creative tech and production models.
• Treat creative as a growth lever and testing signal framework.
• Collaborate with Brand to scale performance while preserving the brand.
• Lead and develop the creative team and maintain high creative standards.

Skills

Creative leadership

Portfolio

Generative AI

Direct-response

Systems thinking

Tools

Midjourney

Runway

Firefly

ElevenLabs

Job description

Engine is the all-in-one travel and spend management platform trusted by 38K+ businesses and groups representing 1.8M+ travelers. We're the retailer and the rails of business travel, the fastest-growing company in travel tech, built on a decade of proprietary technology, supply, and pricing no one else can replicate. Other travel and AI companies run on our infrastructure to book real trips, hold rates, and move payments, without building any of it themselves. We built it, AI-forward at every layer, from how travelers book to how the rails run.

That work has earned recognition as one of Fast Company's Best Workplaces for Innovators (2025), TravelTech's Reservation Platform of the Year (2026), and one of Built In's Best Places to Work (2020–2026).

We're looking for bold, ambitious people to help redefine how businesses manage and experience travel. Working here, you can expect exponential growth, an ambitious pace, full ownership, and high-caliber colleagues who push you to do the best work of your career. Every hire raises the bar.

Come outpace the ordinary and build the future of travel with us.

Your Mission

Create across the entire customer journey. Growth touches every stage from the first impression in a paid ad, printed asset, or event through the website, lifecycle, in-product moments, and beyond.

You’ll own the creative that shows up across all of it and build the automation, tooling, and workflows behind a creative engine capable of producing distinctive, high-performing, on-brand work at scale. You’ll make AI a core part of how we create while maintaining a high bar for taste, craft, and originality.

This is a role for a creative leader who wants to build as much as they lead shaping the work, the systems, and ultimately the team behind it.

What You'll Own

• The AI-assisted creative engine. Design the end-to-end creative pipeline: workflows, prompt libraries, components, guardrails, asset databases, and tool stacks that allow us to ship high volumes of quality creative quickly. Drive real innovation in how we apply AI to stand out, and establish the QA systems that keep quality high as output scales.
• New tools and approaches to creative production. Continuously experiment with emerging creative technology, agencies, and production models. Partner with Growth’s technical resources to leverage open-source libraries and build new capabilities that increase the speed, quality, and scale of creative production.
• Creative as targeting. Treat creative as an audience filter and a growth lever. Build frameworks for high-performing creative territories, connect testing insights and customer behavior to new ideas, and diagnose what’s working through signals like hook rate, hold rate, conversion, and creative decay.
• The bridge between brand and scale. Work closely with Engine’s Brand team to translate creative and narrative into Engine’s brand systems while finding new ways to scale performance without losing what makes the brand distinctive.
• In-person and experiential creative. Lead creative for events, conferences, activations, and field moments. Design experiences that make the brand felt, earn attention in the room, and create stories and assets that travel far beyond the event itself.
• Brand-distinctive, entertainment-first work. Ship creative that earns its media spend: bold, memorable, and unmistakably Engine. Bring flagship ideas that break category conventions while keeping the creative pipeline fresh ahead of fatigue.
• Testing velocity. Partner with Growth on structured testing frameworks, concept logs, and learning agendas so every cycle compounds into smarter, stronger creative.
• The creative team. Lead and develop designers, editors, AI specialists, and producers. Set the creative bar, stay close to the work, and deploy your own craft when it counts. Build a culture that values experimentation, speed, accountability, and exceptional creative standards.

How We’ll Measure Success

Leading indicators include testing velocity, volume of test-ready assets shipped, creative performance signals such as hook rate and hold rate, and reach generated from in-person moments.

Lagging indicators include efficient acquisition and pipeline driven by creative and events, with creative quality and brand fit maintained as output scales.

What You’ll Bring

• Extensive experience in creative strategy or creative leadership, with a track record of innovation and measurable business impact.
• A portfolio that spans both experiential or event creative and performance-driven digital work.
• Hands-on fluency with generative AI and creative technology including tools like: Midjourney, Runway, Firefly, ElevenLabs, automation platforms and the ability to turn them into scalable creative systems.
• Strong direct-response instincts: you can diagnose hooks, understand why creative performs, and know what makes work effective platform by platform.
• A systems-builder mindset. You naturally think in workflows, SOPs, pipelines, and ways to increase creative velocity without compromising quality.
• Craft pedigree in copy, art direction, design, or video that grounds your strategic judgment.
• Strong performance fluency: you’re comfortable with the metrics and know how to translate data and creative signals into the next iteration.
• Experience leading and developing creative talent while remaining close enough to the work to contribute directly when needed.
• Visionary and pragmatic, with high agency and an appetite for building in a fast-moving, AI-forward environment.

We accept applications for this role on an ongoing basis. We review applications as they are received and encourage interested candidates to apply early.

Compensation

Our compensation packages are based on several factors, including your experience, expertise, and location. In addition to a competitive base salary, total compensation may include equity and/or variable pay (OTE). Your recruiter will share your complete compensation package as you move through the process.

Base Pay Range

$157,505 - $218,000 USD

The Engine Edge: Perks & CompensationWe believe in rewarding great work with great benefits:

• Compensation: Competitive base pay tied to role and experience, with opportunities for bonuses, commissions, and equity.
• Environments for Success: Different roles have different needs in terms of the environments that drive success which is why we have a hybrid-hub model. Whether you are in one of our amazing offices or fully remote, we’ll make sure you have what you need to succeed.

Perks and benefits may vary based on employment type, location, and more.