DESIGN LEAD
Creative Team Lead
Inspire the work. Grow the people. Raise the standard.
THE OPPORTUNITY
We’re looking for a Design Lead who loves great creative work — and gets just as much satisfaction from helping other designers do their best work.
This is a hands-on creative leadership role. You’ll continue to design, particularly where your experience can make the biggest difference, while leading creative direction, raising quality across our work and supporting the growth of the designers around you.
You’ll work across a varied portfolio of digital and learning experiences, partnering with Designers, Content Writers, Video Editors, Developers, Project Managers, Learner Experience Leads and Client Partnership Leads to turn client challenges into thoughtful, engaging creative solutions.
Some weeks you’ll be closer to the work: solving a difficult design problem, shaping a concept or stepping into a complex project. At other times, your focus will be on coaching, reviewing work, planning capacity and making sure the team has the clarity and support it needs to deliver.
The constant is simple: you’ll help make our design work better and our designers stronger.
WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING
You’ll lead creative quality across the portfolio, interpreting briefs, client objectives, brand guidance and feedback to establish clear and effective creative direction.
You’ll review work and give thoughtful, constructive feedback that helps designers strengthen both the quality of their outputs and their own creative judgement. You’ll help maintain strong visual standards and ensure our templates, assets and guidelines make great work easier to produce consistently.
As a people manager, you’ll support the designers you manage through regular 1:1s, coaching, feedback and development conversations. You’ll set clear expectations, recognise great performance and create opportunities for people to stretch, learn and take greater ownership.
You’ll also help keep Design running effectively. That means maintaining visibility of workloads and priorities, helping allocate work according to capacity and capability, spotting delivery risks early and removing blockers that could get in the team’s way.
And you’ll be an important voice for Design with our clients and wider teams. You’ll contribute to kick-offs, workshops and solution conversations, confidently presenting creative thinking and helping stakeholders understand the rationale behind our design decisions.
We’ll also look to you to keep us moving forward — exploring new tools, trends and creative practices and finding practical ways to improve our quality, efficiency and ways of working.
YOU’LL THRIVE HERE IF
You’re an experienced designer with excellent visual judgement and a strong understanding of brand, digital design and user experience.
You care about the details, but you can also see the bigger picture. You know when to get hands-on, when to provide direction and when to give someone else the space and support to solve the problem themselves.
You’ll probably recognise yourself in a lot of this:
- You love producing excellent creative work and helping others raise theirs.
- You give clear, specific and constructive creative feedback.
- You enjoy coaching designers and helping people build confidence and capability.
- You can translate sometimes messy client challenges into clear creative direction.
- You communicate confidently with clients and colleagues from different disciplines.
- You’re organised and comfortable balancing competing projects, priorities and deadlines.
- You take ownership of problems and work collaboratively to solve them.
- You’re curious about new tools, technologies and ways of working.
- You can balance creative ambition with the commercial and operational realities of delivering client work.
- You create an environment where people feel trusted to contribute ideas, experiment and do great work.
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
You’ll know you’re making an impact when the quality and consistency of our design work keeps getting stronger; designers are developing greater confidence, capability and ownership; projects are delivered reliably; and clients and colleagues increasingly see Design as a trusted creative partner.
Most importantly, your impact won’t only be visible in the work you personally create. It will be visible in the quality of work the whole team is able to produce.
THE ONE THING
Raise the quality of design while building the capability of the designers around you, so Design consistently contributes exceptional work to client and business success.
WHAT YOU GET
We want great work to be recognised and rewarded, with a package designed to support your financial, physical and emotional wellbeing.
Competitive pay and reward — Your role is benchmarked against the external market, with a clear salary band and opportunities to grow your reward as your impact, capability and contribution develop.
Bonus opportunity — Eligible Quadmarkers can participate in our discretionary bonus programme, which recognises both company performance and individual contribution. The standard bonus target is 10% of base salary for eligible employees.
Flexible, remote-first working, with offsites too — Work from wherever you do your best thinking. Life happens, and if you need to flex, we’ll always aim to support that. Quarterly in-person team days help keep the relationships real.
Travel insurance — We believe in the importance of face-to-face time and want you to be able to spend time with colleagues and clients when you need to.
Private Medical Insurance — In the UK, we partner with Vitality, with health and life cover alongside rewards designed to help you stay healthy.
EAP and mental health support — Access to a confidential Employee Assistance Programme and mental health resources.
Enhanced leave — Our leave offering is enhanced beyond statutory requirements depending on location. In the UK, that means 25 days’ annual leave, plus three additional paid days when we shut down over the holidays.
LIFE AT QUADMARK
We care about what you achieve, how you achieve it and how you continue to grow.
Our CORE values shape how we work together: Choose to Learn, Own It, Respect Others and Elevate the Team.
For a Design Lead, that means staying curious and open to new ideas, taking ownership of delivery and quality, communicating with clarity and kindness, and creating the conditions for other people to succeed.
If you’re excited by the idea of combining excellent design craft with creative direction, client collaboration and people leadership, we’d love to hear from you.