Head of Design
remote | Full-time (40 hours/week)
Meraki Branding is a purpose-driven creative agency helping founder-led businesses build and grow their brands online with intention. We specialise in Squarespace web design, branding and ongoing digital marketing support. With over 700 brands launched across 30+ countries, our work blends clarity, creativity and care.
The Role
We are seeking a strategic and visionary Head of Design to lead the creative direction, elevate design standards, and optimize the design department at Meraki Branding. This is a key leadership role for a commercially astute individual who can effectively balance creative execution with people management and operational structure with deep care for bringing the best out of each and every brand.
This role is accountable for creative excellence, design quality, and team capability, while actively partnering with operations and leadership on delivery efficiency and commercial health.
You will be directly responsible for elevating the quality, consistency, and impact of all our design work by overseeing the creative direction, selectively contributing hands-on to high-impact projects, and mentoring the team in alignment with Meraki's design ethos.
Furthermore, you will partner with leadership to drive workflow optimisation, apply commercial awareness to maintain visibility over team utilization, capacity, and recovery rates, and evolve Meraki’s design and branding strategy to position our creative offering for the next stage of growth.
What You’ll Own
This role is accountable for the creative, strategic and commercial leadership of the design department within our growing agency. You oversee the creative direction of our website, branding, and marketing projects, and elevate our design standards by managing, mentoring, and optimizing the design team and its workflows to ensure creative excellence, while working in close partnership with operations and account leadership to support on-time, on-budget delivery.
This role is part leadership and part hands-on design, with active involvement focused on complex, high-impact client work, and setting the creative bar, as well as ensuring our own brand, website and marketing is held to the standards we set for our client work.
What You’ll Do
Creative & Client Excellence
Set and uphold creative direction across all projects to ensure every design output is aligned with strategy, brand goals, and Meraki’s design ethos.
Intervene proactively when projects stall or client concerns arise to restore clarity, resolve issues, and maintain momentum.
Maintain visibility over team utilisation and resourcing, and work closely with operations to flag risks, imbalances, or efficiency opportunities that may impact delivery or profitability.
Conduct final reviews of deliverables to ensure they meet internal standards for quality, consistency, and brand fidelity before they reach the client.
Lead client interactions on complex or high-stakes projects to maintain alignment, manage expectations, and reinforce Meraki’s reputation for soulful, strategic design.
Continuously evolve our creative systems, templates, and standards to foster innovation, improve efficiency, and support scalable creative excellence.
Hands-on Design
Remain hands-on in design, with a focus on high-impact, complex, or strategically significant projects rather than day-to-day production across all work.
Design visually compelling, user-friendly websites that align with client objectives, brand guidelines, and strategic goals.
Define and document design standards and best practices to support consistency, quality, and scale across the team.
Collaborate closely with team members to translate briefs into clear concepts, wireframes, and high-quality design solutions.
Create logos, icons, and custom graphics where senior-level creative input materially elevates brand expression or project outcome.
Engage directly with clients to understand their vision, present ideas, gather feedback, and align on creative direction when senior involvement adds value.
Incorporate thoughtful interaction design and user flows to ensure both beauty and functionality in the final outputs.
Team Leadership & Development
Coach, mentor, and provide structured feedback to each design team member through regular 1:1s and reviews to support personal growth, performance, and engagement.
Manage team capacity and workflows effectively in collaboration with operations, balancing deadlines, creative integrity, and team wellbeing.
Collaborate with designers to shape briefs and project approaches that stay rooted in client needs, brand strategy, and Meraki’s standards.
Design and deliver a clear onboarding and training experience for new hires to help them contribute confidently and quickly.
Collaborate strategically with department heads to refine and streamline the end-to-end design and delivery process, resolving cross-departmental misalignments.
Cultivate a team culture of curiosity, trust, and ownership by encouraging open dialogue, creative risk-taking, and professional responsibility
Hold the team accountable to agreed quality standards, delivery expectations, and growth commitments.
Represent the design team in leadership forums to advocate for their needs, voice insights, and contribute to wider company planning.
Who You Are
7+ years experience in brand, web, or digital design, with at least 2–3 years in a senior or leadership role (agency experience strongly preferred).
A strong hands-on designer with a refined eye for typography, layout, brand systems, and user experience.
Highly experienced in designing and leading website projects and brand identities from concept to launch.
Comfortable balancing creative excellence with commercial awareness, including understanding utilization, timelines, delivery quality, and resourcing constraints.
An experienced people leader who enjoys mentoring, coaching, and helping designers grow in confidence, skill, and ownership.
Naturally systems-oriented; you enjoy creating design standards, templates, workflows, and processes that enable creativity to scale.
Confident working cross-functionally with account management, operations, marketing, and leadership to improve delivery and client experience.
Calm under pressure, solutions-focused, and able to step in decisively when projects or relationships need realignment.
A clear and compassionate communicator who can hold high standards without ego or force.
Emotionally intelligent and self-aware, able to give and receive feedback with maturity and care.
Aligned with Meraki’s values of authenticity, integrity, collaboration, creativity, and striving for excellence.
Fluent English speaker, able to work European time zones.
Platforms / Tools You Should Know
Squarespace
Shopify / Wordpress
Adobe Suite / Figma
Notion / ClickUp
Canva
Comfortable and eager learning and working with AI tools
What You’ll Love
Being at the heart of a growing creative company
A globally inspired team and community
Freedom and flexibility in a remote-first culture
Purpose-driven projects that make real impact
A boutique, values-led team with soul and ambition.
Founders who genuinely care about the work and appreciate great service.
Ability to shape the role
What We Give Back
A kind, creative, heart-led team
Competitive compensation
Travel at least once a year for team gatherings and creative intensives
Application Process
We hire intentionally; we want this to feel like a full-body yes on both sides.
We aim to keep the process respectful of your time and will share expectations clearly at each stage.
Our process includes:
A short introductory video
A written assessment
Your human design profile
Three interview rounds focused on alignment, strengths and long-term fit
If this role feels like a genuine yes, we’d love to hear from you.
When applying, please include:
Your CV
A Loom video link answering the following:
"Why does this role genuinely excite you? What kind of founder do you work best with and why? Name one thing you are most proud of. What do you love to do in your free time? What would make this role a “full yes” for you?”
