Design Senior Manager - Immersive Branding

PepsiCo • New York, NY

3d

About The Position

The Brand and Customer Experience Design team creates meaningful connections between brands and customers—bridging our portfolio and our consumers to develop innovative ways to engage people, make an impact, and leave a lasting mark. Our work begins with a sketch, evolves into a script, and ultimately becomes whatever medium tells the story best.
As the Senior Design Manager, Immersive Branding, you will have an extraordinary opportunity to shape brand narratives through mixed media. Your role will focus on crafting compelling and immersive brand experiences across social, cultural, digital, and metaphysical landscapes. You are a visionary in all creative workstreams, collaborating with leadership, cross-functional teams, and partners to deliver world-class creative work every day.
The Brand and Customer Experience Design team is an architect of unforgettable moments, crafting immersive brand experiences that resonate deeply with audiences around the globe. Our mission is to blend innovative ideas, culinary expertise, and strategic insights to transform dimensional spaces, unlock the consumer mindset, and establish a strong connection between our brands and our customers.
PepsiCo is a playground for curious people. We invite thinkers, doers, and changemakers to champion innovation, take calculated risks, and challenge the status quo. From executives to leaders on the frontline, we’re excited about the future. We take chances. Together, we dare to make the world a better place.
Our associates are the magic ingredient. Each of them plays an integral role in helping create deep connections between people and our products. Think about your last group celebration: Chances are, one of our iconic brands was by your side. At PepsiCo, you’re invited to be a part of a global team of innovators who make, move, and sell these products—which are enjoyed by more than 1 billion people a day.
A career at PepsiCo means working in a culture where everyone’s invited. Here, you can dare to be yourself. No matter who you are or where you’re from, you can influence the people around you and the world at large. By showing up, you’ll have the opportunity learn, develop, and grow our unique skill sets at work. Our supportive teams can fuel your professional goals to make a global impact.
At PepsiCo design, we have a saying: “We’re crazy enough to think we can inspire the future.” This is what drives us, in everything we imagine, develop and execute.
Design is a strategic global function for PepsiCo that drives business value by leading innovation, creating experiences, and brand engagements. We are one of the first major food & beverage companies to integrate multiple design disciplines—brand design, design thinking, industrial design, design strategy, front-end innovation—into a single group.
Our goal is clear: to connect PepsiCo’s food & beverage portfolios, with today’s hyper-connected, networked users and consumers hungry for meaningful, authentic, and relevant brand experiences across multiple touchpoints and regions of the world.
Experience Design creates transformative, dimensional spaces that manifest a brand’s story in an immersive yet expansive way, forging bold new connections with consumers. We inspire the future!

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Visual Communication, Experiential Design, or a related field.
• Proven experience as a Brand Designer, Experiential Designer, or in a similar role leading multi-disciplinary design teams within an agency or in-house creative team.
• Experience in leading small teams, fostering collaboration, and driving innovative design solutions.
• A strong portfolio showcasing immersive brand experiences, environmental design, digital interactions, and branding projects.
• Experiential Design & Execution – Expertise in designing and building immersive brand experiences that blend digital and physical interactions.
• Creative Team Leadership – Experience managing a team of mixed-trade designers (e.g., graphic designers, 3D artists, spatial designers, motion designers, and digital experience creators) to deliver compelling brand narratives.
• Graphic Design Expertise – Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) with a strong grasp of design principles, typography, color theory, and layout techniques.
• Digital & UI/UX Design Knowledge – Understanding of digital design best practices, including social media graphics, web design, and user interface/user experience principles.
• Product & Packaging Visualization – Ability to translate brand identity onto various packaging formats and 3D rendering or prototyping experience is a plus.
• Print Production Understanding – Familiarity with print production processes, color management, and pre-press procedures, particularly for packaging design.
• Storytelling & Narrative Building – Ability to craft compelling brand stories that resonate across multiple touchpoints.
• Cross-functional Collaboration – Strong communication and collaboration skills to effectively work with stakeholders across departments.

Nice To Haves

• Additional certifications or coursework in branding, marketing, digital design, or experiential design is a plus.
• Product & Packaging Visualization – Ability to translate brand identity onto various packaging formats and 3D rendering or prototyping experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Customer/Consumer-Centric Design Thinking – Deeply understand customer and consumer behaviors and motivations, ensuring that all programs and campaigns foster immersive interactions between brands, customers, and consumers across various environments, such as gaming, music, festivals, and more.
• Creative Leadership – Lead, manage, and mentor designers across multiple workstreams, driving excellence in transformative and immersive experiences.
• Experiential Design – Oversee the design and execution of brands in the physical and digital brand experiences, ensuring they deliver memorable, immersive interactions that engage consumers.
• Strategic Program & Campaign Execution – Balance long-term growth investments (programs) and short-term impactful moments (campaigns), measuring success in both.
• Brand Toolkit Development – Create toolkits that establish clear brand throughlines adaptable across markets.
• Creative Direction & Execution – Provide direction for all workstreams with an emphasis on world-class, immersive storytelling.
• Design Thinking Excellence – Apply a structured approach from inspiration to vision, concept, narrative, and customer journey development.
• Innovation & Brainstorming – Lead cross-functional creative brainstorms that leverage design thinking to unlock new approaches to brand activations.
• Brand Identity & Experiential Language – Collaborate with brand teams to define experiential brand language, including materials, textures, lighting, sounds, and more.
• Visualization & Presentation – Effectively communicate concepts through visualization and presentations to internal and external stakeholders.
• Creative Process Ownership – Manage projects from brief to execution, with a focus on concept visualization and execution.
• Design Execution & Aesthetic Excellence – Demonstrate expertise in defining all design elements, including identity, typography, iconography, illustrations, animations, and more.
• Material & Fabrication Expertise – Establish a keen understanding of textures, fabrications, and physical materials that enhance brand storytelling.
• Leadership & Collaboration – Cultivate a reputation for leadership, reliability, and excellence while fostering a high-performance creative environment.
• Project Management & Execution – Balance creative vision with project management efficiency, ensuring timely and high-quality execution.
• Network Expansion – Build relationships with freelancers and agency partners to enhance creative output.

Benefits

• Bonus based on performance and eligibility target payout is 15% of annual salary paid out annually.
• Paid time off subject to eligibility, including paid parental leave, vacation, sick, and bereavement.
• Medical, Dental, Vision, Disability, Health, and Dependent Care Reimbursement Accounts, Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Insurance (Accident, Group Legal, Life), Defined Contribution Retirement Plan.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level