Brand Design Lead, Brand Studio (SF/Bay Area, CA - hybrid)

About The Role

The Brand Studio team is responsible for shaping and expressing Motive’s brand across every touchpoint—bringing clarity, consistency, and creativity to how we show up in the world. From integrated campaigns and product storytelling to always-on brand systems, we help Motive scale visually while staying distinctive, credible, and human. We collaborate closely with marketing, product marketing, content, growth, and regional teams to turn strategy into world-class creative work.

As our Brand Design Lead, you’ll lead design excellence across Motive while managing and mentoring a globally distributed team across North America and Pakistan. You’ll provide creative direction and concept development for high-impact projects, elevate craft across the team, and ensure our design systems, processes, and tools are built to scale globally. As both a creative leader and hands-on designer, you’ll help develop and sell concepts for major campaigns and activations while providing clear, confident design leadership to cross-functional stakeholders.

You’ll also play a critical role in evolving how Brand Studio operates—building the systems, processes, and partnerships that help the team move with greater speed, quality, and consistency. This is an opportunity to help define the next chapter of Motive’s visual identity while helping a growing creative organization do its best work.

What You’ll Do

Creative Leadership & Design Excellence

• Lead brand design within Motive’s Brand Studio, setting a high bar for craft, consistency, and brand expression.
• Lead visual creative direction for campaigns, activations, and brand initiatives in partnership with Brand Studio and Marketing leadership.
• Provide hands-on design leadership for key moments, helping sell in concepts and creative direction to stakeholders and executives.
• Ensure Motive’s brand system is consistently and effectively applied across regions, channels, and formats.

Team Leadership & Global Collaboration

• Manage, mentor, and grow a distributed team of designers across the US, Mexico and Pakistan.
• Establish clear design standards, feedback rituals, and development paths to elevate team performance and morale.
• Foster strong collaboration across time zones, ensuring clarity, alignment, and creative cohesion.
• Act as a trusted creative partner to regional and global marketing teams.

Process, Systems & Scale

• Evolve Brand Studio processes to support global scale, speed, and quality.
• Build and maintain scalable design systems, toolkits, and documentation that empower teams to move faster without sacrificing brand integrity.
• Help evaluate and develop AI-assisted creative workflows across ideation, exploration, localization, and production, using emerging tools thoughtfully to improve speed and scale without compromising craft, originality, or brand integrity.
• Partner with Product Design, Marketing Ops, Content, and other teams to ensure creative workflows integrate seamlessly with broader marketing systems and processes.

Stakeholder Partnership & Influence

• Translate marketing and business objectives into compelling visual concepts and creative solutions.
• Confidently present and articulate design rationale, creative strategy, and recommendations to senior stakeholders.
• Balance creative ambition with practical execution, timelines, and resource considerations.

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of experience in graphic design, brand design, or creative roles, with 2+ years of experience leading, mentoring, or managing designers.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating world-class identity design, brand systems, campaign design, and integrated marketing work.
• Demonstrated ability to remain hands-on in the work while providing creative direction, mentorship, and leadership to other designers.
• Proven experience leading and developing designers across regions or time zones.
• Figma-first mindset, with deep expertise using Figma for collaborative design, system building, and team workflows.
• Experience building or evolving design systems and scalable creative processes.
• Strong conceptual thinking paired with exceptional attention to craft and detail.
• Ability to sell creative ideas and influence stakeholders with clarity and confidence.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with comfort presenting to executive audiences.