Design Director

Design Director

Location: Austin, TX

At IA Interior Architects, the Design Director sets a clear vision for design excellence and leads the studio in delivering innovative, high-performing environments. This role partners closely with clients, project teams, and firm leadership to translate business and human needs into design solutions that are strategic, aspirational, and executable.

The ideal candidate is a strong conceptual thinker with deep experience translating business shifts into compelling visual and narrative systems. You will lead multidisciplinary teams through complex engagements spanning brand strategy, identity, digital experience, campaigns, and organizational storytelling.

This is a leadership role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, can shape vision from insight, and knows how to move both clients and creative teams toward bold, cohesive outcomes.

Lead Repositioning Engagements

• Direct creative strategy and design execution for brand repositioning initiatives across industries
• Translate market shifts, audience insights, and business goals into clear creative direction
• Build scalable identity systems, messaging frameworks, and experience concepts that reflect a renewed market position
• Guide organizations through periods of reinvention, growth, acquisition, or category change

Drive Creative Excellence

• Set the creative standard across identity, digital, motion, presentation, campaign, and experiential work
• Lead critique, mentorship, and creative development across design teams
• Ensure strategic alignment and craft excellence from concept through delivery
• Push teams toward distinctive, future-facing solutions rather than incremental updates

Partner with Strategy & Leadership

• Collaborate closely with strategists, writers, researchers, and executive leadership
• Participate in workshops, stakeholder interviews, and executive presentations
• Help shape client narratives and facilitate alignment across senior decision-makers
• Contribute to IA's evolving point of view around transformation, brand systems, and design leadership

Build Client Trust

• Present work confidently and persuasively to executive-level audiences
• Lead complex conversations around change, differentiation, and organizational identity
• Balance ambition with pragmatism while maintaining a high creative bar
• Act as a trusted advisor throughout the engagement lifecycle

Experience

• 8–12+ years in brand, design, creative direction, or experience design roles
• Proven leadership on repositioning, rebrand, transformation, or modernization initiatives
• Strong portfolio demonstrating strategic thinking and systems-oriented design work
• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams and managing senior client relationships

Skills

• Exceptional visual design and creative direction abilities
• Strong understanding of brand architecture, storytelling, and experience systems
• Ability to connect business strategy with design execution
• Excellent presentation, facilitation, and communication skills
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and leading through evolving client environments

Mindset

• Curious, strategic, and highly collaborative
• Comfortable challenging assumptions and reframing problems
• Passionate about helping organizations evolve meaningfully
• Systems thinker with strong creative instincts
• Energized by shaping new categories, narratives, and experiences

Interior Architects, Inc. (IA) provides equal opportunity in all aspects of recruitment and employment to all persons without regard to their race, color, creed, religion or belief, sexual orientation, marital status, nationality, national origin or ancestry, sex, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, veteran status, uniformed service member and to promote the full realization of equal employment opportunities.