Design Lead – Brand & Studio 

Stockport – Hybrid, 3 office days

Up to £60,000

If you’re a hands-on designer with a senior leadership background, who’s got experience working rebrand or brand transformations projects, I want to hear from you.

My client is a fast-growing fintech business that’s just had a new brand identity designed by their agency partner. They now need someone to take ownership of that identity – shaping how it shows up everywhere customers meet it – while also leading an existing in-house team of three designers through a shift in how the studio operates.

This is as much a process and leadership role as it is a creative one. You’ll be looking hard at how the team works day to day and figuring out where AI can genuinely help, as a practical way to free up designer time for the work that needs a brilliant human behind it. A well-maintained prompt library, built off the brand guidelines and templates for example, with the aim of allowing the marketing team to self-serve routine assets like emails, meaning the designers spend their time on the bigger, higher-impact work instead.

What you’ll be doing:

• Landing the new identity – taking the brand from initial guidelines into daily reality across web, app, campaigns and every other customer touchpoint, so it feels the same wherever people meet it
• Rethinking how the studio operates – reviewing current ways of working and building smarter processes, so the team can move faster without creative quality slipping
• Making AI genuinely useful – identifying where tools can save real time on repetitive tasks (think prompt libraries for on-brand, templated assets) versus where you need a designer’s judgement, and building the systems that make that split work
• Developing the team – coaching the three designers already in place, helping them grow into the parts of the job that matter most as routine work gets faster
• Performance-led creative – working alongside paid social, digital and email teams to keep creative sharp, using results to spot what’s landing and what needs a rethink
• Owning the customer experience – working with product and digital teams so the brand holds together from first click to last, not just in the ad campaigns

What we’re looking for:

• Deep fluency in Adobe Creative Suite and Figma
• Serious experience in a senior level Creative / Design role where you’ve had this level of responsibility and ownership for both brand and studio, either agency-side or in-house, with a portfolio showing rebrands or brand transformations
• Real experience leading a creative team through change – evolving how a studio works
• Genuine, practical experience using AI creative tools day to day

Benefits: Flexible hours, hybrid working, 3 office days per week, 26 days annual leave with the option to buy and sell a further 5, free parking, central Stockport location, annual reviews and funded training and certifications.

If you’ve got the hands on experience, the team management experience AND the brand experience, I would love to discuss this with you – apply now!