Design Director

As the Design Director on the AlphaSense Brand & Creative team, you own the strategic and conceptual pull-through of our brand — translating who AlphaSense is into ideas, design systems, and experiences that show up everywhere the company does. You set the creative vision and the standard of craft for the design discipline, and you're a leader-doer: you direct from inside the work, getting your hands on it when an idea demands it. This is a defining moment for the brand. As the market shifts from an information economy to a reasoning economy, it's racing toward a shortcut — assuming that wiring a model up to more tools and more sources adds up to intelligence. AlphaSense exists to prove otherwise: access isn't intelligence, and the question that matters isn't “Can it connect?” but “Can I trust it?” You'll be the one who makes that argument — connected isn't intelligent — look and feel as undeniable as the platform makes it true. This role is equal parts vision and craft, leadership and making. You'll shape the creative direction for our most significant brand investments — campaigns, product storytelling, OOH, social, web, and events — then build the team and systems that let that work scale without losing its edge. You'll mentor and grow the design team alongside the Design Manager, while partnering across PMM, Product, Web, and Comms, and directing agency and production partners, to align stakeholders behind brave ideas. Your north star: take the highest-stakes ideas in enterprise intelligence — trust, evidence, judgment under pressure — and make them clear, human, and impossible to ignore. Who You Are - A Proven Creative Leader: 10+ years in brand and creative design, with a portfolio that shows range across campaigns, brand systems, and high-craft execution — and a track record of leading teams to do the best work of their careers. - A Leader-Doer: You set the vision and the bar, but you stay in the work. You direct from inside it and get hands-on when an idea needs your hand — not from a distance. - Ideas-First: You lead with concept. You can take an abstract, technical idea — like enterprise market intelligence — and find the visual metaphor that makes it land for a sophisticated audience. - A Builder of Teams & Culture: You've managed and mentored designers (including through other managers), shaped roles, grown careers, and cultivated a creative culture of transparency, connectedness, and inspiration. - A Systems Thinker: You think in systems and scale — building design languages and ways of working that keep the brand consistent as it grows while still leaving room to surprise. - A Trusted Cross-Functional Partner: You build deep relationships across PMM, Product, Web/Growth, and Comms, influence senior stakeholders, and can win support and alignment for ambitious, high-stakes work. - Fluent in Complex & Enterprise Storytelling: You've made technical, B2B, or otherwise “dry” subject matter feel anything but boring, ideally for expert or executive audiences. - Strategically Grounded: You balance creative ambition with clarity, strategy, and business outcomes, and you thrive in a fast-moving environment with evolving priorities and a fair amount of ambiguity. What You’ll Do: - Help Drive the Design Vision: Define and evolve the creative direction for the AlphaSense brand across campaigns, product storytelling, OOH, social, web, and events — ensuring a cohesive, elevated, unmistakably-AlphaSense expression at every touchpoint. - Lead Idea-Centric Work: Drive the strategic and conceptual pull-through of big ideas from brief through execution, setting the bar for craft and originality on our most visible, highest-stakes brand investments. - Hands-On: The team is lean, so using your own design thinking and execution to make the work when the moment calls for it is imperative — you direct from inside the work, not from a distance. - Build & Grow the Team: Lead, mentor, and develop the brand design team in partnership with the Design Manager — shaping roles, raising the craft bar, growing careers, and keeping morale and creative culture high. - Partner Across Functions: Build deep, productive relationships across creative functions (copy, art direction, production, film) as well as marketing functions (PMM, Product, Web/Growth, and Comms) and lead agency and production partners when the time calls for it — aligning stakeholders and securing support to move ambitious work forward. - Evolve the System: Develop and steward the AlphaSense design system and visual language so the brand scales with consistency while still leaving room to surprise. - Push Product Integration: Find innovative ways to bring the product into the brand story, demonstrating the full creative potential of the platform. - Develop Deep Product & Market Fluency: Build a thorough understanding of the AlphaSense platform, our customers, and the broader B2B enterprise landscape so the work reflects real product value, use cases, and buyer context — not just surface-level aesthetics.