Senior Performance Creative

Silverback Strategies is a performance marketing agency built to help marketers grow and capitalize on change. Ad Age, Inc Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washingtonian, and The Washington Business Journal have recognized Silverback as one of the best places to work. We hire the best and help them get better. Silverbackers are supported, challenged and inspired by their peers. Regardless of title or tenure, every Silverbacker plays a role in helping our agency get better. This is a place where you can make a difference. Job Duties: • Translate strategy into visuals: partner closely with our Creative Strategist to take research, hooks, and loose creative briefs and turn them into concrete visual concepts, storyboards, and finished assets • Produce both statics and video: design and build static ad creative and edit/produce short-form video and motion content for paid social at a consistently high craft level • Interpret brand guidance at any altitude: work from anything ranging from a thin one-pager to a comprehensive brand system, and reliably produce creative that's unmistakably on-brand either way • Navigate regulated-industry review cycles: produce creative that anticipates compliance and legal scrutiny, minimizing revision rounds and rejection risk without watering down creative quality • Push brands into new creative territory: identify opportunities to evolve a brand's creative expression to unlock scale and new-market growth, while staying inside brand-safety guardrails • Select and edit raw footage/imagery: review raw photography and video footage from shoots and select, crop, cut, and edit the strongest material into finished assets — no on-set creative direction required • Own asset quality and turnaround: deliver polished, client-ready work with minimal internal revision cycles so assets aren't burning days internally before they even reach the client • Maintain visual consistency at scale: keep creative consistent and on-brand across a high volume of ad variations, formats, and platform What we are looking for: Core Experience • 5+ years in a hands-on creative production role — Art Director, Senior Designer, Creative Producer, or similar —with dedicated performance/paid social experience • A portfolio that shows range across both static design and video/motion editing, ideally for paid social specifically • Experience working within brand guidelines of varying depth and translating them into new creative applications • Experience in regulated or highly regulated industries (healthcare, finance, insurance, legal, or similar) is a strong plus, given our client base • Experience working in matrixed organizations with multiple stakeholders and layered approval processes Craft & Technical Skills • Expert-level proficiency in Figma (or similar) for static design and layout • Strong proficiency in After Effects (or similar) for motion graphics and video editing • Comfortable editing raw video/photo footage into finished assets: selects, cuts, pacing, captions/graphics overlays • Working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator) as needed • Understands platform-specific creative specs and best practices across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and other paid social channels Creative & Strategic Judgment • A strong eye for what "good" looks like in modern performance advertising — thumb-stopping, polished, and effective, not just pretty • Understands performance/paid-social fundamentals (hooks, pacing, hierarchy, CTAs) well enough to make smart creative calls independently, without needing to run the strategy • Can take a loose brief or visual direction and fill in the gaps with sound creative judgment • High attention to detail — typos, brand misapplications, and spec errors don't make it to client review • Comfortable giving and receiving fast, iterative feedback in a deadline-driven environment Working Style • Thrives on speed without sacrificing polish — this role owns production timelines that need to move fast to offset long approval cycles • Collaborative by nature; sees the Creative Strategist as a partner, not a hand-off point • Self-sufficient in production; doesn't need heavy oversight to get from brief to finished asset What Success Looks Like: • Assets consistently reach client/compliance review in 1–2 internal revision rounds or fewer • Creative reliably passes compliance and legal review with minimal rework • Output balances brand safety with creative freshness — clients see growth and new territory, not just "more of the same" • The Strategist and Senior Performance Creative function as a true two-person creative engine, each covering what the other doesn't What This Role Is Not: • Not a photo/video shoot creative director — you won't be expected to run or direct live shoots, just to select and edit from what's captured • Not a pure strategist — research, testing frameworks, and reporting live with the Creative Strategist, not this role