Global Design Lead (f/m/d)

Purpose of Position

The Global Design Lead is Awin’s most senior design authority within Marketing, responsible for elevating and transforming how the organisation approaches design across all channels and touchpoints. This role sets the strategic direction for design excellence, oversees a multi-disciplinary team, and partners cross-functionally to ensure Awin delivers world-class creative, UI/UX, and digital-native experiences. Acting as both a hands-on expert and a strategic leader, the Global Design Lead defines Awin’s design standards, leads the creation of a scalable design system, and ensures consistent, high-quality execution that strengthens our brand across markets.

Key Tasks

Design Leadership & Vision

• Define and drive the global design strategy across Marketing, ensuring creative excellence, innovation, and consistency across all markets.
• Establish a clear design vision that elevates Awin’s brand and differentiates us across all customer touchpoints.
• Create and embed a global design system that is scalable, intuitive, and used cross-functionally across Marketing, Product, Commercial, and Operations.
• Champion a culture of high-performance design, inspiring a team of designers across multiple disciplines.

Team Management & Development

• Lead, mentor, and develop the global design team, with responsibility for team structure, capability growth, coaching, and continuous improvement.
• Build a collaborative, empowered, and high-performing design function with strong creative, UI, UX, and visual communication capabilities.
• Oversee resource allocation, project prioritisation, and workflow management to ensure efficient and effective delivery.

Creative & Digital Design Excellence

• Oversee and contribute to the creation of visual assets across all marketing channels, including campaigns, events, brand content, social, video, motion graphics, CRM, paid media, and web.
• Drive digital-native design practices across UI, UX, responsive web layouts, and interactive experiences.
• Ensure high-quality execution of presentations, toolkits, templates, motion graphics, video, and animation.
• Set standards for accessibility, usability, and design quality across all creative output.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with Brand, Communications, Content, Product, and regional marketing teams to ensure design supports strategic goals and delivers seamless customer experiences.
• Work with Product & UX teams to ensure brand and design coherence across product surfaces and user journeys.
• Collaborate with external agencies, freelancers, and production partners to scale design delivery when required.

Stakeholder Influence & Leadership

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders, translating business objectives into compelling visual and digital experiences.
• Lead design thinking and creative workshops, helping teams across the business understand how design improves outcomes.
• Maintain a “design-as-a-service” mindset with stakeholders, ensuring responsiveness, clarity of briefs, and professionalism in delivery.

Governance, Systems & Brand Stewardship

• Own and optimise Awin’s global design libraries, assets, guidelines, and documentation.
• Ensure consistent application of the brand across all markets and channels, acting as the senior-most guardian of brand quality.
• Establish and refine design processes, tooling, templates, and workflows to improve efficiency and scalability.
• Oversee quality control processes, feedback rounds, and approvals to maintain exceptional design standards.

Skills & Expertise 

Professional experience: 

• Proven senior experience leading multi-disciplinary design teams across traditional design, digital design, UI, and UX.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating excellence across branding, digital interfaces, motion, campaigns, and complex multi-channel design.
• Expertise in defining and implementing design systems at scale.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and ability to influence and collaborate with senior leaders.
• Expert proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), After Effects, Premiere Pro, and other core production tools.
• Strong competence in Figma or other UI/UX design platforms.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate the “why” behind design decisions.
• Strong organisational skills, able to manage multiple streams and drive projects from concept to delivery.

Personal skills

• Exceptional communicator — clear, confident, and empathetic.
• Strategic thinker with strong business and brand acumen.
• Calm under pressure, with excellent judgement and discretion.
• Collaborative and able to influence at all levels of the organisation.
• Highly organised, proactive, and able to manage multiple priorities with precision.
• Native English speaker, with excellent communication abilities, both written and verbal

Our Offer

• Flexi-Week and Work-Life Balance: We prioritise your mental health and wellbeing, offering you a flexible four-day Flexi-Week at full pay and with no reduction to your annual holiday allowance. We also offer a variety of different paid special leaves.
• Remote Working Allowance: You will receive a monthly allowance to cover part of your running costs. In addition, we will support you in setting up your remote workspace appropriately.
• Flexi-Office: We offer an international culture and flexibility through our Flexi-Office and hybrid/remote work possibilities to work across Awin regions
• Development: We’ve built our extensive training suite Awin Academy to cover a wide range of skills that nurture you professionally and personally, with trainings conveniently packaged together to support your overall development. 

Established in 2000, Awin is proud of our dynamic, social and inclusive culture.

Like all businesses, we’ve had to adapt and nurture our culture in a virtual environment. Our virtual ‘Life @ Awin’ hub brings our colleagues from across the globe together for various social activities.

Diversity & Inclusion are paramount to us, and we proudly pursue and hire diverse team members. We champion uniqueness and authenticity; this is who we are at our core. Our network of affiliate partnerships are diverse and transparent, as are the employees powering our vision to build the world’s leading open partner ecosystem. We welcome all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. If you need support at any point in the application or interview process, please let us know.

Awin is part of the Axel Springer group. Learn more at axelspringer.com/en/, and explore the Axel Springer Essentials here:                                        axelspringer.com/en/inside/the-essentials-what-we-have-adapted-and-why

Apply now to begin the next stage of your career at a progressive company that supports both your professional and personal development.

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