Creative Director

Thesis•Portland, OR

8d•$140,000 - $180,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Thesis is an independent agency working at the intersection of creativity, strategy, and technology. We partner with ambitious brands to solve complex business and marketing challenges and create ideas, experiences, and systems built to scale. We’re evolving how we work to bring thinking and making closer together, build more accountable teams, and use technology and AI to expand what’s creatively possible. As a Creative Director at Thesis, you’ll establish the creative vision for the clients, teams, and opportunities you lead. You’ll turn business and audience challenges into ideas worth pursuing, build belief around those ideas, and lead multidisciplinary teams to make them real. You’re a thinker and a maker with strong taste, strategic instincts, and the ability to move between ideas and execution. You know when to get into the work and when to create space for others to lead. You’ll be accountable for the idea, the people, the client relationship, and the creative outcome, while managing, mentoring, and developing the next generation of creative leaders.

Requirements

A multidisciplinary creative leader with experience leading significant creative work, teams, and client relationships.
An ideas person, thinker, and maker who can move between strategy, creative direction, and execution.
A creative with exceptional taste and judgment across disciplines.
A leader who knows how to manage, mentor, and grow creative talent.
A compelling storyteller who can build belief with clients, teams, and senior stakeholders.
Comfortable with ambiguity, direct client relationships, and the pace of agency work.
Curious and experimental with AI, technology, and new ways of making.
Collaborative, accountable, low ego, and capable of making the people around you better.

Responsibilities

Establish the creative vision for assigned clients, accounts, and opportunities.
Turn business, audience, and cultural insights into strong ideas and creative opportunities.
Lead concept development and ensure ideas maintain their integrity as they scale across channels, experiences, and content.
Partner with Strategy and clients to define the problem and opportunity before defining the deliverable.
Connect creative decisions to audience needs, brand ambition, culture, and business objectives.
Look beyond the immediate ask to identify opportunities for greater client and creative impact.
Lead multidisciplinary teams across design, writing, motion, experience, content, and emerging disciplines.
Set a high creative standard while staying close enough to the work to meaningfully shape and elevate it.
Manage, mentor, and develop creative talent and emerging leaders through clear expectations, feedback, and meaningful opportunities for growth.
Build teams that can increasingly operate with ownership and autonomy.
Serve as a trusted creative partner to senior clients.
Build belief in ideas through clear, compelling storytelling and presentations.
Navigate feedback and business constraints while protecting the creative ambition.
Build relationships that expand Thesis’s creative influence and uncover new opportunities.
Use AI and emerging technology to expand exploration, prototype ideas, accelerate learning, and increase the leverage of teams.
Partner with Technology and Production to explore new ways of making and bringing ideas to life.
Use technology to scale strong ideas without replacing human judgment, originality, and taste.
Own the creative outcome from opportunity through execution.
Build the smallest, strongest team capable of solving the problem.
Partner across Strategy, Technology, Client Leadership, Production, and Operations to reduce handoffs and create clear ownership.
Balance creative ambition with scope, timing, resources, and business realities.
Identify opportunities to grow existing client relationships through creativity, strategy, and technology.
Play a leadership role in new business, from opportunity framing and concept development through pitching.
Bring proactive ideas and provocations to clients before they’re requested.