Senior Creative Director

DE-YAN; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

DE-YAN seeks a Senior Creative Director to unite strategy, craft, and leadership across global experiential work. You’ll steer high-profile projects from concept to flawless execution, guiding senior client relationships and building world-class teams.

You will translate technology narratives into human stories, nurture talent, align cross-functional groups, and ensure deliverables meet the highest creative standards across time zones and markets.

Qualifications

• 14+ years of creative direction in experiential or spatial design.
• Portfolio with brand activations and live experiences.
• Proven track record leading multi-disciplinary teams.
• Ability to translate tech narratives into human storytelling.
• Experience presenting to senior clients.

Responsibilities

• Set creative vision for experiential campaigns and installations.
• Lead multidisciplinary teams across global projects.
• Translate complex tech stories into human-centered ideas.
• Maintain high creative standards from concept to delivery.
• Collaborate with strategy, production, and client services.
• Present work and defend creative decisions to clients.
• On-site participation during shoots and activations.
• Nurture studio culture and talent growth.

Skills

Creative leadership

Brand storytelling

Experience design

Client relationship management

Strategic thinking

Team building

On-site production

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Design or related field

Job description

As Sr. Creative Director, you bring together big-picture thinking and hands-on craft — the strategic clarity to lead senior client relationships and the creative authority to drive large-scale experiential work across global teams and markets. You'll steer complex, high-profile projects from the first spark of strategy through to precision execution, including some of the world's most demanding global tentpole events, where great creative and flawless execution simply aren't optional.

You're a natural storyteller who can walk a room through a creative vision with real confidence and conviction. Creative strategy runs through everything you do — weaving audience insight, brand ambition, and bold creative expression into one clear point of view. You know how to grow a creative team without losing what makes it special, develop talent without losing momentum, and hold a vision together across time zones, disciplines, and competing pressures. At this level, the work and the people behind it are both your responsibility.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Creative Direction & Concepting

• Set the creative vision across experiential campaigns, brand activations, product launches, and environmental installations — and carry that vision all the way through to the moment someone walks into the room and feels it
• Take complex technology narratives and find the human story inside them — the bold, emotionally resonant idea that makes people stop, engage, and remember
• Own the creative standard across every touchpoint, at every stage of the project — because the gap between a strong concept and a compromised execution is where the work lives or dies
• Bring a commanding perspective on design, space, and storytelling that challenges the team to go further, think differently, and make work that actually matters
• Lead a multidisciplinary creative team — art directors, designers, architects, motion designers — with the kind of clarity and conviction that makes people want to do their best work
• Give direction and feedback that sharpens thinking, builds confidence, and pushes the work to a place it couldn't have reached without you
• Be the connective force between creative, strategy, production, and client services — the person who ensures that the most ambitious ideas are also the most executable ones
• Build and protect a studio culture where craft is non-negotiable, curiosity is constant, and the standard of ambition never drifts

Client Partnership

• Earn the kind of trust with senior clients where they're calling you before the brief is written — because your understanding of their business, brand, and audience runs that deep
• Present and defend creative work with the authority and storytelling instinct to bring clients along on the journey, not just win the meeting
• Navigate feedback with hard-won judgment — knowing when a client note is making the work stronger, and when it's your job to hold the line and explain why
• Stay ahead of your clients' needs by understanding not just what they're asking for today, but where their brand, their audiences, and their industry are heading next

Execution & Production

• Take full creative ownership across the complete arc of every project — physical, digital, and environmental — from the earliest sketch through to the final moment of delivery
• Show up on-site at visits, shoots, and activations, because the details that define great work don't protect themselves and the team needs to know you're in it with them
• Hold every final deliverable to the standard of the original vision — partnering with production to ensure that what gets built is worthy of what was imagined

REQUIREMENTS

• 14+ years of creative direction, with a strong foundation in experiential, environmental, or spatial design
• A portfolio that tells a clear story: brand activations, live experiences, product launches, and environmental installations that demonstrate range, craft, and creative point of view — ideally with significant work in or alongside the tech industry
• A genuine track record of leading creative teams through complex, high-stakes, multi-layered projects from first brief to final build — without losing the work, the people, or your mind
• The rare ability to take technology and innovation narratives — often abstract, often technical — and find the human experience at the centre of them
• A natural at the table with senior clients — someone whose confidence comes from experience, whose instincts are sharp, and who knows how to make the work land at the highest level of engagement
• Deeply collaborative across disciplines, with the ability to align strategy, production, and creative around a single, uncompromising vision
• Hands-on when it matters — you understand that the gap between great and good often lives in the details, and you're not above getting into them
• Genuinely energised by where experience design is heading — where technology, culture, and human connection are creating territory that hasn't been explored yet