AI Creative Director

Valid•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

Valid is a product-driven creative company with an in-house engineering team that builds tools to test, learn, and scale what works. We combine strategy, creative, and AI to turn insights into systems, helping brands move faster and make better decisions across every channel. This is a senior leadership role for someone who can sit at the center of client growth, creative performance, and internal execution, and make all three move faster. Your job is not simply to oversee deliverables. Your job is to make sure the work we put into client accounts wins. That means understanding the client’s business deeply, recognizing that what they ask for is not always what they actually need, and having the strategic confidence to redirect, refine, and shape the work into something that outperforms what is already running. You must be equally comfortable: leading creative direction, building testing strategy, pitching directly to clients, managing high-level relationships, pushing back when necessary, and translating all of that into clear internal execution. This is a hands-on operator role. You cannot lead this from above. You must know how to build strategy, create strong concepts, understand AI production, and step into the work yourself when needed. The team should move faster because your expertise is in the room. This role sits at the intersection of: creative leadership, performance strategy, client trust, and speed. The pace is aggressive. Clients move fast. Ad accounts move faster. So do we.

Requirements

Deep understanding of performance creative.
Strategic thinking beyond what is asked.
Ability to lead clients without becoming a yes-person.
Ability to lead teams without babysitting.
Ability to pitch with conviction.
Thrives in a fast, demanding environment.
Knows how to build strategy.
Knows how to create strong concepts.
Understands AI production.
Can step into the work yourself when needed.
Strong communication skills.
Strong creative instinct.

Responsibilities

Be the senior strategic voice on key accounts, understanding each client’s business model, offer, funnel, and performance landscape.
Identify the real problem underneath the client's ask and guide them toward the right solution.
Command trust quickly, pitch with confidence, and build relationships that make clients want to follow your lead.
Ensure the creative strategy is built to outperform by building testing plans around real account opportunities.
Identify which hooks, offers, formats, and angles should be attacked next.
Steer concepts toward performance over subjective preference.
Ensure every batch of work has a strategic reason for existing.
Lead internal creatives, editors, strategists, and producers with speed and clarity.
Take a messy client conversation, extract the strategic signal, convert it into actionable briefs, sharpen weak ideas, and keep production moving without bottlenecks.
Present concepts persuasively, defend strategic choices, handle skepticism, and continually reinforce that we know how to make accounts perform.
Solve, adapt, and keep moving in a fast, demanding environment.