Senior Director, Design

As a leader of our Design practice at Proto, you will guide a team of visual and verbal designers to concept ideas and bring them to life through thoughtful, expressive, and enduring design. You’ll help define how brands and products look, sound, and behave in the world by connecting strategy to craft and concept to execution. You’ll help clients see potential and find inspiration in the strategy made real through creative concepts.

You have a strong creative point of view that balances bold imagination and clear strategic intent. You bring depth to design systems that guide how people interact with and understand their world. Your work will inspire teams and clients alike to see how design not only shapes perception but also builds meaning and drives growth.

• Lead an interdisciplinary team of designers and writers to develop conceptual business ideas and design systems that move people and strengthen business impact;
• Evolve and grow Proto’s Design practice, including philosophy, processes, and craft standards to ensure consistently exceptional creative output;
• Translate strategic insight and cultural context into distinctive creative ideas and visual worlds that set brands and experiences apart;
• Guide concept development from exploration to expression, ensuring every detail of design communicates the brand’s purpose and point of view;
• Direct the creation of design systems, toolkits, and visual languages that scale across platforms and touchpoints;
• Partner closely with strategy and experience leaders to bring holistic, diverse brand experiences to life;
• Present and articulate creative direction and design rationale clearly and persuasively to senior clients and internal teams;
• Take as much pride in design that sells an idea and moves an organization to do something new as the final design that ends up in the world;
• Nurture and mentor creative talent, fostering a culture of craft excellence, curiosity, and collaboration;
• Contribute to business development efforts through thought leadership, creative visioning, and proposal development.

• 10+ years in a conceptual design role where strategy, interaction design, product design, and user research have been an integral part of your contributions, ideally at an agency or consultancy;
• At least 2-3 years of leadership experience where you’re comfortably leading conceptual ideas while being in the work and guiding teams at critical points across projects;
• A portfolio that features a breadth of conceptual project types and demonstrates highly developed design that effectively solves business problems;
• Proficiency in collaboration tools like Figma, Google Suite, and Slack required, as well as a willingness to explore new tools and technologies.

In New York City, where this role is located, the salary range is $190–230K. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors, including business needs, years of relevant experience, level of responsibility and qualifications. This position reports to our CEO.

Proto is a New York based company with offices at 3 World Trade. Our staff is encouraged to work‑from‑office on days of their choosing based on personal preferences, collaboration moments, client meetings, and all‑company gatherings. We also support workplace flexibility and have made work‑from‑anywhere available to all staff (within a 3‑hour time zone of eastern standard time zone). Our core business hours are generally 9:30am‑6:00pm EST;

however, due to our client service model and collaborative working culture, individual working hours fluctuate to reflect client deadlines and deliverables.

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As set forth in Proto’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

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