Design Team Lead

The Design Team Lead oversees the day-to-day operations of the Design Team, balancing two key aspects: maintaining high design standards across all client work and ensuring the team remains organized, supported, and efficient.

The team primarily focuses on designing email and SMS campaigns for ecommerce brands, along with ad images, GIFs, short video edits, and occasional landing pages. While you will still design, the core responsibility involves ensuring the final output is accurate and effective. You will identify design flaws before clients notice them and provide clear, actionable feedback to designers.

You will collaborate closely with Account Managers, who assign tasks, and with designers who execute them. This role acts as a bridge between these groups, helping Account Managers clarify campaign requirements, translating those into clear design directions, and pushing back on unrealistic or ineffective requests.

The Design Team Lead reports to the Service Director and works closely with other departments to ensure timely and high-quality delivery of design work.

About the Role:

Mission statement: To uphold the quality of design work to a level that clients notice and to lead a team that is well-organized, properly briefed, and heard. The first half of this mission is about craft: reviewing work, identifying design weaknesses, and providing constructive direction. The second half is about people: managing workloads, adapting to changes, and ensuring the team’s ideas and concerns are addressed.

General Responsibilities:

Design quality and direction:

• Reviewing the team’s design work before it reaches Account Managers or clients, providing specific feedback for actionable improvements
• Diagnosing design issues such as hierarchy, contrast, call-to-action weight, image-to-text balance, or mobile responsiveness, and documenting fixes clearly
• Advising Account Managers on visual campaign needs and pushing back on vague or ineffective briefs
• Designing directly when workload demands, ensuring hands-on involvement beyond supervision
• Maintaining consistent design standards across diverse client brands, niches, and visual identities
• Setting and enforcing design standards for email, SMS campaigns, ad images, GIFs, and short video assets
• Understanding each client’s visual brand identity to advise on ideas, improvements, and optimizations

Running the week:

• Distributing and organizing the team’s workload weekly, based on Account Manager assignments
• Quickly reorganizing priorities when changes occur, team availability shifts, or last-minute client requests arise
• Monitoring workload distribution to prevent overload and missed deadlines
• Serving as the first point of contact for the Design Team when issues arise
• Ensuring design targets for each client account are met

The team:

• Facilitating Design Team group calls and one-to-one meetings
• Collecting and addressing team suggestions, concerns, and feedback seriously
• Mentoring designers and helping less experienced members develop their skills
• Onboarding new designers to the team’s workflow and processes
• Fostering collaboration between Design and other service teams through workshops, tutorials, and documentation
• Organizing training and skill-building sessions for the Design Team

Process and improvement:

• Identifying inefficiencies in workflows, handoffs, or communication and implementing fixes
• Creating and maintaining team documentation
• Staying updated on Figma features and integrating useful updates into team workflows
• Tracking design and email marketing trends, sharing relevant insights without overloading the team
• Bringing industry best practices to the Service Director and team
• Taking on projects and initiatives delegated by the Service Director

Position Specs:

• Full-time commitment with adherence to office hours availability
• Average of 140 tracked hours per month
• Fixed-rate monthly salary paid in USD
• Contractor status post-signing of a non-disclosure agreement
• Exclusivity agreement, prohibiting similar roles elsewhere while employed
• 30-day notice period after the first month
• Performance reviews every 9 to 12 months, with the first review occurring between 3 to 6 months

Requirements:

About You:

You are a senior designer with at least 5 years of experience, showcasing a portfolio of real client work across diverse brands and niches—not just personal projects. At least 3 years of this experience should be in email marketing design.

You are an expert in Figma, comfortable building and maintaining component libraries, and stay updated on its releases. Knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity is a plus, though not heavily relied upon.

Your expertise spans multiple design outputs, with email and SMS campaigns as the core focus. Ad images, GIFs, and short video edits are also part of your repertoire. Basic web design knowledge is beneficial, given the occasional landing page tasks.

Your strength lies in visual judgment and clear communication. You can critique a design, pinpoint issues, and provide actionable feedback without needing follow-up calls. Organizational skills are critical for managing a team’s workload and adapting to changes.

You are approachable, open to honest conversations, and proactive in improving processes. Detail-oriented and comfortable working remotely with a globally distributed team.

Key Traits:

Strong visual judgment with the ability to articulate it. Organized and calm under changing circumstances. Approachable and willing to have candid discussions. Curious about tools and trends without being overly influenced by them. Highly detail-oriented and adept at remote collaboration across time zones.

Key Requirements:

• At least 5 years of experience as a graphic designer, with a minimum of 3 years in email marketing design
• Expert-level proficiency in Figma, including component library management
• Working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity
• Experience producing ad images, animated GIFs, and short video edits
• Portfolio demonstrating on-brand, effective design work for varied clients and niches
• Experience leading, mentoring, or coordinating other designers (formal lead title not required)
• Ability to review designs and provide specific, actionable written feedback
• Capacity to distribute and reorganize team workloads, including last-minute adjustments
• Basic understanding of web design and landing pages is advantageous
• Experience with Klaviyo or similar email marketing platforms is a plus
• Familiarity with Slack, Asana, Hubstaff, Google Workspace, and Figma, with willingness to learn other tools
• Fluent written and spoken English (not necessarily a first language)
• Remote work experience, ideally with a globally distributed team
• Availability and responsiveness during office hours (Monday to Friday, 3–6 PM Barcelona time)
• Consistent work schedule of 30–35 hours per week (140 hours/month)
• Stable internet connection, laptop/PC, and video call capability