Creative Director, Brand

The Team: 

As Upstart’s Brand & Creative Team, we shape how the brand comes to life across every touchpoint — defining our voice, personality, and emotional connection with borrowers and partners. We sit within Growth, designing and creating for impact across all channels, from the digital surfaces where consumers first discover us to the campaigns and brand systems that make Upstart trusted and remembered. 

As Creative Director, Brand at Upstart, you’ll be a senior creative leader for our brand's most visible owned channels including: organic social media, our website, and our brand design systems — while also driving creative vision for brand campaigns. You'll set the creative bar, lead the team, and champion the work that builds lasting brand love at scale. 

This role is ideal for a player / coach — someone equally comfortable guiding a team and doing the work required to get something off the ground. This is an impactful role with the opportunity to be a key driver in making Upstart a beloved brand, cultural driver, and household name.

How you’ll make an impact

• Lead creative strategy and execution across Upstart's owned brand channels: organic social, our website, and brand design systems.
• Grow, inspire, and develop a multi-disciplinary creative team across brand disciplines—setting a high creative standard, delivering direct and actionable feedback, and building the kind of team culture where talented people come to do their best work.
• Drive brand campaign creative from concept to delivery, including leading both internal development and directing agency partners across TV, OOH, digital, and emerging media
• Actively evolve how Upstart uses AI tools to accelerate creative output without sacrificing craft
• Partner closely with Marketing, Product, and senior leadership to align creative strategy with business goals — showing up as a trusted creative thought partner across the organization, not just a creative executor.

Minimum Qualifications 

• 10+ years of experience in brand creative, design, or creative direction, with at least 4+ years leading and managing multi-disciplinary creative teams.
• Demonstrated experience overseeing brand campaign development end-to-end across channels including TV, OOH, and digital with both internal teams and external agency partners.
• Portfolio showcasing excellence in brand identity work, visual design systems, and effective metrics-driving, multi-channel campaign creative.
• Proven track record of developing creative talent and building team culture across disciplines.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep knowledge of organic social content strategy and platform-native creative across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and emerging channels.
• Familiarity with website design + content strategy and a track record of partnering with web and UX teams to deliver quality digital experiences.
• Ability to translate brand strategy into scalable design systems and guidelines adopted org-wide.
• Experience at a consumer-facing tech brand or other regulated industry brand.
• Advanced fluency with AI-assisted creative tools and a demonstrated approach to using emerging technologies as a force-multiplier for creative quality and output.

Position location This role is available in the following locations: Remote

Travel requirements As a digital first company, the majority of your work can be accomplished remotely. The majority of our employees can live and work anywhere in the U.S but are encouraged to to still spend high quality time in-person collaborating via regular onsites. The in-person sessions’ cadence varies depending on the team and role; most teams meet once or twice per quarter for 2-4 consecutive days at a time.