Creative Director

Robert Half•San Ramon, CA

About The Position

Robert Half is hiring a Creative Director to lead its Brand Design Studio within the Marketing department. The role is responsible for strengthening strategic thinking, concept development, visual identity, design quality, and creative execution across the company’s marketing, communications, and brand experiences. The Creative Director translates brand and marketing strategies into effective creative work across channels and ensures the studio delivers quality creative services and production at scale. The role owns the evolution, governance, implementation, and adoption of Robert Half’s visual identity system in partnership with Brand Marketing. It leads a multidisciplinary creative team and works with marketing, communications, corporate services, business stakeholders, and external creative partners to develop strategically aligned, distinctive, and operationally achievable concepts, design systems, campaign assets, and production solutions. The Creative Director is the senior internal creative leader for major initiatives, including agency-led work, and ensures creative work reflects company standards, supports business objectives, and improves stakeholder confidence and organizational creative maturity. The position also leads creative operations and team development, including production delivery, resource management, workflow standards, creative capabilities, and a culture of accountability, collaboration, constructive critique, innovation, and continuous improvement. The role is measured by creative quality, consistent use of visual identity standards, stakeholder satisfaction, effective support for marketing and communications initiatives, delivery and production efficiency, partner collaboration, and team growth.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Visual Communication, Advertising, Fine Arts, Marketing, or a related discipline.
15 or more years of progressive experience in creative, design, advertising, creative services, or brand-related roles.
7 or more years leading creative teams, agencies, studios, or design organizations.
Experience leading multidisciplinary creative teams responsible for both concept development and production delivery.
Experience owning or leading visual identity systems, design standards, design systems, or creative guidelines.
Experience developing integrated creative concepts and production-ready work across digital, social, web, presentation, event, campaign, video, motion, and print channels.
Experience partnering with brand, marketing, communications, content, digital, UX, production, agency, and business stakeholders.
Expert knowledge of modern design tools and creative platforms.
Expertise in visual identity systems, design systems, brand governance, and creative guidelines.
Experience with digital, social, web, presentation, event, motion, video, and print design workflows.
Understanding of creative production, photography, video, motion, and agency production processes.
Familiarity with AI-enabled creative tools and workflows.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite and Copilot.
Executive presence and strong presentation skills.
Exceptional written, verbal, and visual communication skills.
Ability to influence without authority in a matrixed environment.
Ability to articulate and defend creative direction, design rationale, and production recommendations.
Ability to provide constructive creative feedback and lead productive critique processes.
Strong relationship-building skills across marketing, communications, creative, digital, agency, vendor, and business stakeholders.
Ability to coach, inspire, and raise expectations for creative thinking and execution quality.

Nice To Haves

B2B, professional services, consulting, technology, staffing, or related experience.

Responsibilities

Establish and communicate the creative vision for Robert Half’s marketing, communications, and brand experiences.
Lead or guide creative concepts, campaign ideas, visual approaches, and design solutions across channels and touchpoints.
Own the evolution, governance, implementation, and adoption of the visual identity system in partnership with Brand Marketing.
Define and maintain design standards, visual frameworks, creative guidelines, and best practices.
Translate brand strategy, messaging, and audience insights into visual expression across campaigns, content, communications, digital experiences, presentations, events, and customer-facing materials.
Review and direct creative work to ensure quality, consistency, audience relevance, craftsmanship, effectiveness, and brand integrity.
Serve as the senior internal creative leader for major agency-led initiatives and ensure alignment with identity standards, business objectives, audience needs, and creative expectations.
Partner with marketing, communications, corporate services, and business stakeholders to support marketing and communications objectives.
Turn campaign briefs, messaging inputs, and audience insights into creative strategies, concepts, design approaches, production plans, and deliverables.
Advise on creative work throughout campaign planning, development, agency collaboration, and production planning.
Guide collaboration with external agencies, freelancers, production partners, and internal teams, selecting appropriate resource models for the work.
Build organizational partnerships that improve collaboration, alignment, stakeholder confidence, and creative outcomes.
Partner with UX, Media Design Studio, marketing channel teams, Communications, and Corporate Services to ensure creative solutions are effective, feasible, and consistent.
Lead and develop a multidisciplinary team of designers, art directors, production specialists, and creative professionals.
Ensure the Brand Design Studio delivers quality creative production, visual design, digital, presentation, event, campaign, and internal creative assets efficiently and consistently.
Partner with the PMO leader to define intake, prioritization, briefing, review, production, workflow, and delivery standards.
Manage creative resources, agencies, freelancers, vendors, production partners, and creative technology investments as needed.
Develop creative capabilities in concept development, design systems, digital experiences, motion design, AI-enabled creativity, presentation design, and emerging technologies.
Foster a high-performance creative culture based on accountability, collaboration, constructive critique, curiosity, innovation, production excellence, and continuous improvement.
Coach and inspire the team to improve creative thinking, design quality, storytelling, execution standards, and overall output.
Provide timely feedback and handle concerns and difficult conversations with emotional intelligence, fairness, and consistency.

Benefits

Group health insurance benefits, including medical, vision, and dental.
FSA and HSA healthcare accounts.
Life and accident insurance.
Adoption and fertility assistance.
Paid parental leave of up to 6 weeks.
Short- and long-term disability insurance.
Paid time off for vacation, personal needs, and sick time.
Choice Time Off (CTO), with up to 17 days per calendar year for a new hire, prorated according to hours worked and varying by years of service.
Up to 11 paid holidays per calendar year.
401(k) savings and investment plan or deferred compensation plan, if eligible.
Employer match of 100% on the first 3% of eligible employee contributions.
Eligibility for a discretionary annual bonus.