Senior Creative Director, Marketing | Bankrate

This role is open to remote or hybrid candidates (East Coast preference), with hybrid options available in our New York, NY or Charlotte area offices. Must be able to work Eastern Standard Time hours.

About the role

This is the founding seat of Bankrate’s Marketing Creative pod — a new, non-traditional creative director role. We’re looking for an AI-native creative leader who combines sharp creative judgment with deep AI fluency to drive revenue and elevate the brand through creative produced and tested at scale across every channel. You’ll set the standard for what “good” looks like — visually and verbally — and build the AI tooling and workflows that enable Bankrate to meet that standard at a volume and velocity a conventional team can’t match. Your work will multiply the impact of a strong creative point of view: one idea becomes dozens of channel-native variants, tested in-market with performance data determining the winner. You’ll own the full arc: the judgment that makes the work worth shipping, the systems that ship it fast, and the results that tie it back to revenue and brand lift.

Responsibilities

• AI-Powered Marketing Production: Build and run Bankrate’s marketing production pipeline — the tooling and workflows that turn a single concept into a library of on-brand, channel-native variants ready to test — freeing your team to focus on judgment calls instead of repetitive production.
• Rapid Testing → Revenue: Use high-volume creative output to test relentlessly across every channel, letting data (not opinion) pick winners, and tie creative output directly to pipeline and revenue. Speed of learning is the priority.
• Taste & the Creative Standard: Define what "great" looks like across paid, lifecycle, organic social, and brand — and uphold that bar whether an asset was made by a person or a model. Your judgment serves as the quality gate for everything the pod and self-serve tools produce.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Act as the connective tissue between the Head of Design, Head of Performance Marketing, Director of Brand, and Product Marketing Lead.
• Team & Vendor Building: Build a small, judgment-led team as hiring needs arise and manage freelancers or agencies to flex capacity in the interim — all powered by the AI systems you implement.

Requirements

• AI-native, human-led: Expertise with modern AI creative and copy tools, building repeatable workflows (not one-off prompts), with a point of view on where the tooling is headed. AI fluency is leverage, but human judgment remains the core of what makes the work good.
• Strategic discernment & good judgment: Ability to quickly identify which of ten ad variants is worth testing and explain why in actionable terms. This judgment applies across formats: performance ads, copy lines, data claims, or polished video.
• Team builder: Experience hiring, coaching, and maximizing creative talent. Ability to build a small, judgment-led team that achieves more because of AI systems, not in spite of them.
• Art direction + copywriting range: Primary strength in either art direction or copywriting, with working fluency in the other — able to direct or execute across both without relying on others for translation.
• Revenue + brand fluency: Comfortable speaking the language of performance marketing (paid, lifecycle, organic, brand) and integrating data, briefs, and campaign plans into a coherent creative direction that drives revenue while protecting the brand.
• Velocity mindset: Default to shipping, testing, and learning — trusting performance data to find winners faster than second-guessing. Iteration sharpens craft, not shortcuts it.
• Strong communicator: Ability to articulate creative rationale, take feedback without defensiveness, and know when to push back on a brief versus execute it as given.

Pay

Total Cash Compensation Range: $120,000 – $210,000 per year. This role is also eligible for Equity, offered separately from the total cash compensation listed above. Actual compensation varies based on location, experience, and qualifications.

Benefits

• Health Insurance Coverage (medical, dental, and vision)
• Life Insurance
• Short and Long-Term Disability Insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Holiday Pay
• 401(k) with match
• Employee Assistance Program
• Paid Parental Bonding Benefit Program
• Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO): Full-time employees accrue 20 days of PTO for a full calendar year annually, increasing to 25 days after five years of service.

About Bankrate

Bankrate is where Americans go to get the best price on life's most important financial decisions. By combining proprietary data, advanced technology, and deep market coverage, Bankrate helps consumers compare options and make confident financial choices across mortgages, credit cards, savings, and more. As a rate provider to the Federal Reserve and the benchmark relied upon by major publishers and policymakers nationwide, Bankrate's rate data is the national standard. This commitment to precision is reflected across all its products. In mortgages, proprietary auction technology puts lenders in real-time competition on price alone, consistently delivering rates in the lowest 10% in the country. For deposits, the platform features exclusively top-tier rates in the top 10% nationally, while its credit card coverage encompasses more than 90% of the market by volume. Founded by a journalist, Bankrate remains dedicated to its founding mission of transparency, honest information, and real competition — helping to make the American dream more affordable for everyone.