Lead Digital Designer

The Guardian•New York, NY

7d•$125,000 - $135,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Guardian is a global news organization seeking a Lead Digital Designer to help shape their visual storytelling. This is a hands-on web/app/UI design role that will lead the US editorial design practice and push the newsroom towards more ambitious, distinctive, and reader-focused digital experiences. The role requires strong editorial judgment, refined visual taste, a deep understanding of digital storytelling, and the ability to translate complex journalism into clear, accessible, and visually compelling experiences. The Lead Digital Designer will collaborate closely with editors, photo editors, designers, and developers across global newsrooms to determine how stories are structured, designed, and experienced across platforms. They will be comfortable directing designers, developing visual systems for breaking news, designing interactive features, and creating reusable templates and workflows. The ideal candidate understands how digital stories are built, how audiences encounter them on various devices, and how design, graphics, photography, video, audio, motion, and interactive elements can enhance journalism. Technical fluency to collaborate with developers, prototype ideas, understand product limitations, and evaluate feasibility is also important.

Requirements

At least 5 years of experience in digital design, editorial design, visual journalism or a comparable creative environment.
Experience working in news or a similarly deadline-driven editorial environment.
A strong portfolio demonstrating exceptional digital design, interactive design, editorial judgment and visual craft across a range of formats within brand guidelines and systems.
Hands-on experience with HTML, SCSS and JavaScript.
Experience designing intuitive, accessible user journeys from concept through final execution, including complex templates or scalable story formats, for mobile and desktop audiences.
Advanced proficiency in Figma and the Adobe Creative Suite.
Experience creating wireframes, prototypes, design systems and polished editorial experiences.
Ability to balance fast-turn assignments with more ambitious medium- and long-term projects.
Strong awareness of, and curiosity about, emerging visual trends in digital design.

Nice To Haves

Experience developing reusable templates, design systems or story formats for a newsroom.
Experience designing election results experiences or other complex data-driven storytelling.

Responsibilities

Work with a small design team, help set priorities and foster a collaborative, engaged and ambitious design culture.
Translate complex journalism into clear, immersive and scalable digital experiences, including visual story packages, interactives, explainers, tools, templates and experimental formats.
Design story experiences that thoughtfully integrate text, graphics, maps, photography, illustration, video, audio, motion and interactive elements where appropriate.
Develop wireframes, prototypes, and polished editorial treatments.
Collaborate with developers to ensure designs are technically feasible, effective, accessible and achievable within project timelines.
Identify opportunities to improve reusable design treatments, templates, workflows and production processes across the visuals team.
Contribute to quick-turn news coverage by developing clear, effective and visually distinctive treatments on deadline.
Help develop new editorial formats and digital storytelling approaches that can reach audiences in fresh and useful ways.
Collaborate with and cultivate relationships with illustrators, artists, designers and other contributors from concept through final execution.
Apply and evolve our design guidelines across daily news and feature stories, with sound judgment about story priority and the broader news agenda.