Associate Creative Director

Smith is on the lookout for a talented and visionary Associate Creative Director who excels at providing creative direction and leading design teams. You will act as a client-facing leader and a dedicated mentor to the designers who report to you. Your mission is to create and guide designs that are not only visually captivating but also user-centered, driving meaningful interactions and delivering exceptional experiences. You will play a key role in evolving our clients’ brands while ensuring that their products and platforms meet the needs of their users.

As an Associate Creative Director at Smith, you will be at the forefront of our creative and user experience design initiatives, managing cross-disciplinary teams on major accounts. You will oversee all phases of user experience and visual design work—from discovery and conceptualization through prototyping, visual QA and production—ensuring that our solutions are visually stunning, functionally effective and solve real problems. Your role will include collaborating closely with research and engineering teams to create experience principles, style guides, detailed user flows, visual design comps, and interactive prototypes that meet user needs and business goals. You will co-lead the creation and refinement of design processes in partnership with our Creative Director, helping shape our approach to user-centered design while inspiring and guiding the broader team.

Your ability to blend design craft with strategic thinking will be pivotal. You will advocate for the end-user while addressing business objectives, ensuring our work combines creativity, usability, and innovation. If you thrive in a collaborative design environment and have a passion for pushing the boundaries of creative and UX design, we want to hear from you.

What You’ll Do:

• Direct all phases of creative work for major accounts, from research and concept through prototyping, high-fidelity design, and delivery. Ensure that designs are user-centered, visually stunning, and technically sound.
• Partner with UX designers to create intuitive interaction patterns, information architecture, and user flows that drive product usability and accessibility.
• Be a thought leader and advisory for the end-to-end creative lifecycle:
  • Lead the articulation and mapping of customer journeys, driving customer experience-led engagements and conversations
  • Shape and contribute to creative strategy and research to inform and inspire design direction
  • Oversee user testing, feedback loops, and optimization to ensure designs evolve to meet user needs effectively
• Create designs that meet the overall business objective, while honoring commitments and deadlines.
• Guide the creation of brand-appropriate visual designs, ensuring a high standard of design quality and creativity across all projects.
• Clearly present what our team is tactically capable of implementing with project plan in mind, while also being able to speak to strategic roadmap of a feature.
• Co-develop and lead department processes from discovery through to Visual QA.
• Collaborate closely with front-end developers to ensure designs are implemented with precision and scalability. Advocate for design systems, component libraries, and design tokens that bridge the gap between design and code.
• Support the growth of the team by mentoring designers, providing constructive feedback, and fostering a culture of collaboration, curiosity, and innovation.
• Driving design innovation by exploring modern tools, trends, and technologies, including AI, to improve workflows and elevate outcomes. 

What We Look For:

• 7 years’ experience in product design, with a proven track record of leading and delivering complex design solutions
• 2 years leading and mentoring designers in a collaborative, fast-paced environment
• Expertise in Figma, advanced prototyping and motion design tools, and proficiency with enterprise design systems across channels.
• Strong understanding of user research methodologies and the ability to apply insights to design
• Commitment to constantly improving your skills and staying current with developments and trends in the industry, as well as sharing this knowledge with others
• Quality standards and attention to detail, with openness to constructive feedback
• Experience creating visual designs for responsive commerce websites and web applications
• Understanding of and experience with user-centered design methodologies and best practices, in particular, the role of design in creating usable and effective web interfaces
• Strong information design skills with experience in data visualization
• Excellent time management skills; ability to work under pressure and hit deadlines while managing multiple projects at once

Success Metrics

Delivery

High-quality designs delivered on time and aligned with business goals.

Team Impact

Improved team productivity and morale through mentorship and process improvements.

Collaboration

Enhanced cross-functional workflows and alignment between design, strategy, and development.

Innovation

Implementation of scalable systems and innovative solutions that elevate customer experiences and drive business outcomes.