Design Director

DEPT®•Toronto, ON

4d•CA$90,000 - CA$105,000•Hybrid

About The Position

This role is part of our Global Studios team. We create emotive yet conversion-focused ideas, products and campaigns at scale and speed. Our specialty is hyper-personalised, digital communications that change perceptions, shape new behaviours, and shift market share for our clients. The Design Director will be responsible for leading the creative direction on client projects, ensuring they meet and exceed expectations. This role involves setting the conceptual strategy, guiding the creative process, and ensuring the final work aligns with brand standards and industry best practices. The Design Director will also lead the design team and collaborate closely with clients.

Requirements

Extensive experience in a creative leadership role with a proven track record of producing high-quality, award-winning work.
Strong creativity, leadership, and mentoring skills, with the ability to inspire and guide a team.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, able to build strong relationships with clients and colleagues.
Expertise in branding, marketing, and design tools (e.g., Figma, Adobe CS).
Experience working across paid social campaigns with some platform knowledge across meta platforms specifically.
A strategic mindset with the ability to deliver innovative solutions that meet client needs.
A strong digital portfolio demonstrating your design and creative leadership expertise.
Competence of Figma, Adobe CS, AI tools (i.e. Weavy, Google AI Studio, Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT, Claude) and all other relevant software.

Responsibilities

Lead the creative strategy and execution across client projects, ensuring work meets high standards and aligns with client objectives.
Collaborate with internal teams and clients to deliver creative solutions, guiding them from concept to final delivery.
Mentor and develop the design team, ensuring they maintain high creative standards and pushing them toward excellence.
Act as an ambassador for the agency, representing its values and work at client meetings and industry events.
Contribute to new business development, pitches, and strengthening client relationships.
Stay current on industry trends and best practices, sharing knowledge with the team and contributing to the agency’s creative evolution.
Helps lead in the development and application of design systems and cross-channel creative templates that drive scalable, consistent, and measurable creative performance.
Employs Creative Automation practices, leveraging technology to reduce manual production effort, increase operational efficiency, and unlock greater focus on strategic and transformative creative work.

Benefits

A flexible hybrid working policy to enjoy the best of both worlds.
Early Finish Fridays, kickstart your weekend early with alternating early-finish Fridays.
Full dental and healthcare cover
15 days paid holiday annually, increasing with length of service (plus Public Holidays).
Birthday Leave, a paid day-off each year.
Access to dedicated mental health resources including enhanced sick pay scheme, employee assistance programme and trained Mental Health First Aiders.
Dept Allowance, a dedicated company contribution to spend on either your professional development or personal wellbeing.
Refreshments are provided in the office all week.
Enhanced family friendly policies to support parents.
Learning and Development, continuous growth opportunities through internal training, and "inspirational talks” guest speakers.
Buddy Program, you will be paired with a ‘Buddy’ to help you navigate your first weeks’ at DEPT®.
A Certified BCorp Agency and is multi-award winning “Agency of the Year”.
Awesome clients. Whether big or small, local or global — at DEPT® you’ll get the opportunity to work with clients of all sizes and across all industries. And we celebrate all of our successes together!
Global DEPT® Cares Month, an annual initiative where our teams donate their professional skills and time to support local charities and pr-bono projects.