Associate Creative Director, Visual Design
About The Position
Strava's Creative Team is responsible for the brand's presence across various platforms including brand campaigns, go-to-market strategies, social media, partnerships, product, and paid media. This team operates within Marketing and collaborates closely with departments such as Marketing, Product Marketing Management, Growth, Brand, and Product to scale one of the world's most recognized active lifestyle brands. They are a high-craft team committed to high standards and driven by mission and purpose. As the Associate Creative Director, Visual Design on the Marketing Creative team, you will be instrumental in setting the creative direction for brand expression across all creative output. This involves integrating marketing strategy, product vision, and contemporary global culture into cohesive and high-impact work. You will lead a small team of experienced designers, oversee the visual direction for major workstreams including brand campaigns, paid social, tentpole moments, and go-to-market initiatives, and collaborate with the Executive Creative Director on strategy and standards. This is a player-coach role, requiring you to be a significant producer while also leading a team of designers to set a high creative bar and provide creative leadership. The role uniquely combines strong creative craft, people management, and marketing fluency. The company follows a flexible hybrid model, requiring more than half of your time to be spent on-site in their San Francisco or New York City offices, three days per week.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in visual design with deep command of typography, layout, color theory, photography, motion, video and visual hierarchy; background spanning both agency and in-house environments
- A portfolio with exceptional craft across brand, campaign, digital, and multi-format work, the kind of output that stops scrolling and earns cultural attention
- Proven experience upleveling a creative team, you've managed experienced designers with a genuine standard for what great looks like, and you enable your teams to grow and develop through successful mentorship
- A strategic mindset: you can concept and pitch an idea as convincingly as you can execute it, and you connect creative decisions to brand and business impact
- Experience designing for paid and organic social (TikTok, Meta, YouTube) with a clear understanding of how creative choices affect performance
- Comfort with ambiguity and scale: you've built in fast-moving, high-growth environments and you're energized by the challenge of doing great work quickly
- Motion sensibility, whether you create it yourself or direct it, you think in movement and know how to push static ideas into dynamic formats
- Experience working within and contributing to cohesive brand systems
Nice To Haves
- global brand and international campaign experience is a plus
Responsibilities
- Own visual design ideation and direction on brand campaigns, paid and organic social, GTMs and product marketing campaigns, and tentpole activations, from concept through final delivery, ensuring every output ladders up to Strava's brand strategy and business goals
- Partner with the ECD on creative strategy, bringing a sharp visual POV to early concepting and a detail-obsessed eye to execution, maintaining craft quality and visual cohesion across every format and collaborator
- Build and evolve multi-format design systems and visual frameworks that scale across digital, social, and experiential touchpoints
- Shape how Strava's brand expression evolves over time: visual identity, typography, photography, video, color systems, seasonal design language, and how we show up in culture
- Translate cultural signals, sport moments, and campaign insights into visual ideas that earn attention, not just impression, drive business goals
- Present work to cross-functional partners and leadership with clarity and conviction, connecting creative decisions to strategy and business outcomes
- Directly manage 2–3 experienced designers: regular 1:1s, career development, direct feedback on craft and creative direction, and performance conversations
- Partner and manage external agencies, freelancers and vendors to bring the right talent and expertise to the right work
Benefits
- For more information on benefits, please click here.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
Education Level
No Education Listed
