Creative Director (Contract)

About the role

The role of Creative Director is the first of its kind at ARCO Design/Build. It involves owning brand-level creative direction as the firm transitions from brand strategy to brand in practice. The role will blend strategy with execution by leading brand direction while being hands-on in the creative process.

Responsibilities

• Own brand-level creative direction across ADB’s corporate and regional work — the standard for how the brand looks, sounds, and shows up everywhere.
• Learn the evolved brand inside out and extend it into what the company actually uses: toolkits, templates, and standards people can pick up and get right on their own.
• Partner with our external branding agency through the build, then take ownership of putting the system into production and keeping it consistent once the work hands off.
• Shape the 2026-2027 activation roadmap and drive its priorities — the proposal system, video and motion, events, environmental graphics, and social.
• Roll up your sleeves on hands-on creative execution for the shared and corporate services teams we support — HR, Talent Acquisition, L&D, Innovation & Technology, Supplier Diversity, Procurement, and Market Research.
• Serve as brand counsel and the steward of creative quality across every touchpoint.
• Set the direction for the designers and specialists who sit across the business, help them speak the brand language fluently, and clear the way for their best work — through a dotted line, not a reporting line.
• Manage regional and functional creative requests as they come, routed through Corporate Marketing case by case — producing some work directly, giving templated direction on others, and leading and mentoring the people doing the work throughout.
• Build out the broader creative infrastructure over time — an asset library and the systems that keep creative findable and repeatable.
• Manage freelance and vendor creative partners as needed.

Qualifications

• 8+ years leading brand and creative, including time inside an in-house or corporate marketing team — not only at an agency.
• Proven brand-level creative direction: you have carried a brand from strategy and guidelines through to activation across channels.
• A track record of turning brand systems into functional toolkits, templates, and standards other people can actually use.
• Experience partnering with external branding, creative, and marketing agencies.
• A strong eye for creative quality across print, digital, video and motion, environmental, and social.
• A leader who sets direction and brings others along through influence and a dotted line, not authority or heavy process.
• Comfort working across regions, business units, and functions in a fast-moving, growth environment.
• An entrepreneurial mindset with ownership, initiative, and a bias toward action.