Sr. Director, Creative & Design

Job Summary

Join us on our mission to empower more people to find their way home by breaking barriers to entry, making the right connections, and building confidence through expert guidance.

Why Now

The brand has earned the right to swing big with recent campaigns. Nearly Home with Reba McEntire became an Effie Finalist in its first year. Mission Zero gave the brand a purpose platform with real cultural weight. The work is landing. The category is paying attention. The team is hungry to do more.

Agency You’ll Lead

• Full production spectrum: broadcast and online video, display and digital takeovers, OOH, print, audio, experiential, B2B campaigns, social, and CRM.
• Team of 10+ including full-time and contract talent, supported by dedicated Program Managers and Brand Operations.
• Peers and teammates are a creative partner in Copy, and senior partners on both the consumer and client sides of the brand spanning activation, stakeholder management, and brand strategy.

What You'll Do

• Set the Creative Standard: Own the visual ambition and creative standard for everything The Bureau produces; champion big idea platforms with multi-year legs; hold a high bar on briefs, production, and the visual language that carries the brand across every touchpoint; be the creative voice the organization and its agency partners look to — the person who defines what great looks like and defends it.
• Lead the Flagship Platform: Serve as the senior creative voice on Nearly Home with Reba McEntire; steward the visual craft across every surface The Bureau owns and evolving the platform as it extends into new channels and cultural moments; hold the standard that makes the platform defensible, distinctive, and durable.
• Drive Retail Creative Discipline: Bring a retail creative mindset to a national brand platform; produce work that creates urgency, responds to market conditions, and stays reactive to rate cycles, seasonal inventory shifts, and cultural moments in real estate; hold the brand standard without sacrificing speed or relevance; partner with brand strategy and performance marketing to keep creative ambition and business effectiveness aligned.
• Drive AI-Enabled Craft: AI fluency is a core expectation; set the vision for how tools like Gemini, Claude, and Figma MCP get integrated into the team's daily practice; expand capacity, raise output quality, and free the team for the creative work that matters most; model AI-augmented creative leadership; partner with the VP, Brand & Creative and Senior Manager, Brand Operations to implement it across workflows and empower the Art Directors to push the practice forward.
• Build and Develop the Team: Invest in the Art Directors and designers as the next generation of creative leadership; structure development, provide real feedback, and briefs that stretch their range; build the kind of creative culture people fight to be part of: collaborative, generous, craft-obsessed, and unafraid of the swing.
• Lead Agency and Production Relationships: Lead and evolve Realtor.com’s agency relationships as the senior creative authority in the room; evaluate, evolve, or re-pitch the ecosystem when the work calls for it; direct external directors, producers, and production houses as creative peers; with a point of view on casting, treatment, editorial, and final output.
• Evolve the Creative Infrastructure: Own the visual identity and brand design system; upgrade, implement, and govern it at scale across consumer and client touchpoints; redesign creative workflows as tools and technology evolve; build systems that increase consistency, speed, and quality without flattening creative ambition.

How We Work

• Balances creativity and innovation on a foundation of in-person collaboration.

What You Bring

• 12+ years of design and art direction experience across agency and in-house creative environments; 5+ years at the ECD, GCD, or senior CD level leading Art Directors and senior individual contributors.
• A portfolio of big idea platforms with multi-year legs — broadcast, digital, OOH, audio, and social — with craft excellence and business impact you can speak to.
• In-house creative leadership experience — current or prior. You know how to build a creative culture inside a company, not just inside an agency.
• Proven experience upgrading or implementing a full visual identity and brand design system at scale, and governing it across a complex organization.
• A track record of redesigning creative workflows as tools and technology have evolved — building better systems, not just adopting new software.
• A retail or marketplace creative sensibility — you know how to create urgency, stay reactive to market conditions, and hold the brand standard at speed.
• Proven creative range across commercial brand advertising and purpose-driven or cause-based work.
• Mastery of the fundamentals: art direction, typography, photography, visual identity, layout, and visual systems. Strong fluency in video, motion, audio, and experiential.
• Experience leading agency and production relationships as the senior creative authority — evaluating partners, directing treatments, holding the bar on final output.
• A sharp, practiced point of view on AI in creative practice — what it multiplies, how to integrate it, and how to make a team meaningfully better with it.
• Clear creative taste, strong opinions held loosely, and a generous instinct for developing the people around you.

Success

• Nearly Home keeps evolving with visual craft that builds on the Effie Finalist foundation and extends across new channels and cultural moments.
• Consumer and client campaigns share a coherent visual language while flexing for very different audiences.
• Your Art Directors and designers are growing into the next generation of creative leadership at Realtor.com®.
• AI is woven into how the Bureau works, freeing the team to spend meaningfully more time on concepting and creative strategy, with output quality moving up alongside throughput.
• The team is producing work they're proud of — and the industry is noticing.

Benefits

• Inclusive and Competitive medical, Rx, dental, and vision coverage
• Family forming benefits
• 13 Paid Holidays
• Flexible Time Off
• 8 hours of paid Volunteer Time off
• Immediate eligibility into Company 401(k) plan with 3.5% company match
• Tuition Reimbursement program for degreed and non-degreed programs
• 1:1 personalized Financial Planning Sessions
• Student Debt Retirement Savings Match program
• Free snacks and refreshments in each office location