Design Lead

The Design Lead is responsible for conceptual development and execution of design projects in one account or group of small accounts, leads the successful implementation of design solutions for marketing/communication campaigns and digital experiences that benefit people and clients. By leading teams, aligning strategic direction with user needs and platform limitations, providing oversight and mentorship to other team members, having excellent interpersonal skills, passion for design and keeping high standards, the Design Lead drives project success, client satisfaction, inspires team members and builds our creative culture.

You will: 

• Designs solutions that meet or exceed strategic objectives in a highly collaborative environment.
• Lead a team of UI designers, providing guidance, feedback, and support to ensure the quality and consistency of design work.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including UX designers, product managers, and developers, to create visually appealing and functional user interfaces.
• Establish and maintain design systems and UI guidelines to ensure consistency in design elements, such as color schemes, typography, and UI components.
• Create interactive prototypes and wireframes to convey design concepts and gather feedback from stakeholders and users.
• Directs and delegates to design team members.
• Understands, analyzes, and responds to client briefs and requests.
• Develops design estimates, directs proper casting for design projects and contributes on project allocation.
• Works closely with development teams to ensure that design specifications are implemented.
• Provides reliable quality assurance on all creative deliverables. Anticipates issues and flags situations that might impact quality or delivery success.
• Manages day-to-day communications with design stakeholders, partners, clients and offshore teams. Actively participates and leads calls and client meetings, handles IM and e-mail communication. Presents work during client presentations.
• Manages the success of a visual design scope, partnering with producers to make sure deadlines are met on schedule and on budget. Anticipates issues and flags situations that might impact quality or delivery success.
• Supervises and provide design direction to design team members to ensure design deliverables meet standards.
• Supports strategic brainstorming, design thinking and collaboration sessions, creative brief development and directs all stages of creative execution.
• Thinks creatively and justify concepts to clients and team members.

You have:

• 6+ yrs. experience in advertising agencies, digital agencies, design agencies, and/or startups.
• English Proficiency (B2+/C1 reading, writing, and conversation).
• Strong design portfolio including pieces for international clients.
• Experience leading projects and teams on UI, visual design, digital marketing, social media, illustration and motion areas, preferably for international clients and global brands.
• Extensive experience on design systems, DDL’s and UI libraries.
• Solid understanding of interactivity and animation principles and best practices.
• Solid understanding of visual design principles, trends, systems and structures.
• Solid understanding of UX principles, trends and theory.
• Understanding of digital marketing, online advertising and business strategy concepts.
• Experience creating user interfaces for digital products.
• Ability to design and implement visual design processes and standards with a strategic approach.
• Ability to manage the success of a visual design scope, schedule and budget. 
• Extensive knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Figma.
• Solid knowledge of Keynote, PowerPoint.
• Knowledge of productivity tools: MS Office (Word, Excel, Outlook), remote collaboration tools (Teams, Slack, Zoom, Drive, Box, Paper, Evernote) and workflow management tools (Jira, Trello, Asana, Basecamp).
• Comfortable on the iOS environment.

What We Offer:

• Competitive benefits packages
• Vacation, compassionate leave, sick days, and flex days
• Access to online services for families and new parents
• End of year closure days (not deducted form vacation balance)
• Diversity and Inclusion Board with 12 affinity groups
• Internal learning and development programs
• And more…

At Critical Mass, we value our employees and offer competitive compensation and benefits packages.  If you’re looking for a challenging and rewarding opportunity to make a significant impact on the lives of our employees, we encourage you to apply for this exciting position today!

The Talent Team at Critical Mass is focused on ensuring we provide the best training, onboarding, and employee experience possible! Our new hires & employees are the future of our organization, and we want to set you up for long-term success. In an effort to do so, we expect our team to work from an office a minimum of 3 days a week.