Design Director

We're looking for a Design Director to lead design excellence across Valerie's Centre of Excellence. You'll own the visual identity and design systems for every brand in our portfolio, ensuring each one has a distinctive, high-quality look and a design system capable of producing exceptional work at speed and scale. You'll lead, develop, and mentor Valerie's design team across brand, still, motion, digital, and e-commerce design.

You'll connect brand strategy, GTM direction, Growth Masters, and Creative Experiments into visual worlds and design systems that help brands grow — from building a new brand from scratch to producing high-volume, hardworking assets across e-commerce, paid, social, and CRM. Success in this role isn't measured by how many assets are produced; it's measured by how distinctive our brands look, how effectively design drives commercial results, and how well the team scales quality without slowing down.

• You naturally balance a strong aesthetic point of view with the discipline needed to scale design across many brands.

• You enjoy translating positioning, GTM strategy, and creative platforms into clear, distinctive visual direction.

• You know how brand worlds need to flex across e-commerce, paid, social, CRM, and marketplaces without losing coherence.

• You thrive on building design systems, templates, and working standards that let teams move fast without compromising quality.

• You enjoy leading and mentoring designers, giving direction that develops people rather than just correcting their work.

• You proactively use performance data to sharpen design decisions rather than treating creative as purely subjective.

• You can confidently raise the bar on work before it reaches founders, holding a high standard of craft.

• You enjoy building playbooks and repeatable systems that make multiple brands and teams better, rather than just producing one-off assets.

• You're comfortable designing for global audiences and understand how visual language shifts across markets like North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

• 8-10+ years of experience in Design, Art Direction, or Design Direction within advertising, branding, digital, or integrated agencies and/or high-growth consumer brands.

• Proven experience leading, mentoring, and developing multidisciplinary design teams.

• An exceptional portfolio demonstrating a clear aesthetic point of view across brand identity, digital, e-commerce, campaigns, and social.

• Proven experience building brands and visual worlds from the ground up.

• Experience translating brand worlds into high-quality, high-volume asset production.

• Strong understanding of e-commerce, DTC, and digital marketing environments.

• Strong understanding of still and motion design, with the ability to direct multidisciplinary creative talent.

• Advanced capability across Adobe Creative Suite, including Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.

• Highly proficient in Figma and comfortable using Canva within scalable brand systems.

• Experience working across multiple brands simultaneously.

• Experience working with SMEs, start-ups, or entrepreneurial/high-growth consumer businesses.

• Strong experience in presentation and deck design.

• Experience working across key markets — North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand — with strong awareness of cultural and aesthetic differences.

• Experience extending brand worlds into packaging, retail, POS, or physical experiences.

• Familiarity with using AI to accelerate design development, adaptation, and production without replacing craft or judgement.

• Experience building reusable design systems, prompts, or templates that can be embedded into AI-driven workflows.

• You prefer producing individual assets over building the systems that let a whole team produce them.

• You see design as a purely aesthetic exercise, disconnected from commercial or performance outcomes.

• You're uncomfortable giving direct, constructive feedback that raises the bar on other designers' work.

• You'd rather go deep on one brand than balance design leadership across a portfolio of brands.

• You're uncomfortable with the pace and volume required by fast-growing e-commerce brands.

• You prefer highly structured environments where visual direction rarely evolves.

The best time to join Valerie was yesterday. The next best time is now 🤓

👋Our Hiring Process

We want interviews to be valuable for both sides. Throughout the process, you'll meet the people you'll work with, learn more about the role, and get a chance to understand how we think and operate.

Our process typically includes:

• Introductory conversation with our Talent team <> 30 mins

• Hiring Manager interview <> 30-45 mins

• Role-specific assessment or practical exercise (where applicable)

• Cross-functional or stakeholder interviews <> 30-45 mins

• Final conversation with leadership <> 30-45 mins

We'll always let you know what to expect before each stage.

💪🏾What You Can Expect

• Meaningful work with visible impact

• High ownership from day one

• Collaboration with experienced founders, operators, and specialists

• A team that values curiosity, initiative, and continuous improvement

• Competitive compensation and the tools you need to do your best work

• Opportunities to grow as Valerie grows