Senior Director, Design at WillowTree in Columbus, OH

WHO WE ARE Welcome to TELUS Digital https://www.telusdigital.com/, where innovation drives impact at a global scale. As an award-winning digital agency and the digital division of TELUS https://www.telus.com/en/, one of Canada’s largest telecommunications providers, we design and deliver transformative customer experiences through cutting-edge technology, agile thinking, and a people-first culture. With a global team across North America, South America, Central America, Europe, Africa, and APAC, we offer end-to-end expertise across: Digital Product Strategy & Innovation, Digital Marketing Services, Web & Mobile App Development, Data & AI, Cloud Engineering, and Enterprise Technology Modernization. From mobile apps and websites to voice UI, chatbots, AI, customer service, and in-store solutions, TELUS Digital enables seamless, trusted, and digitally powered experiences that meet customers wherever they are, all backed by the secure infrastructure and scale of our multi-billion-dollar parent company. LOCATION This role will be in a Work From Near (Hybrid) capacity based in our Columbus, OH, or Charlottesville, VA office. THE OPPORTUNITY This is a rare seat at the table: a Senior Director, Design role where your impact is felt across clients, craft, and company, not just one team or one account. You'll shape the design strategy for a portfolio of Fortune 500 relationships, lead a talented organization across Design, Creative Services, and Content Design globally to define what world-class digital product design looks like at TELUS Digital. This isn't a role where you're executing someone else's vision. You'll set the direction for how we work, how we grow, and how design earns its place in the most consequential conversations our clients are having. RESPONSIBILITIES Design Vision & the Future of the Craft - Develop and champion a forward-looking vision for design at TELUS Digital, one that anticipates how AI, emerging tools, and shifting user expectations will reshape what designers do and how they do it - Define the future competencies of our design organization: the skills, mindsets, and ways of working that will keep our teams and clients ahead of the curve - Translate that vision into tangible practice: how we hire, how we develop talent, how we evaluate quality, and how we talk about design's value in the market - Stay genuinely curious and connected to the broader design and technology landscape, bringing outside perspectives in and helping the team make sense of rapid change Client & Practice Leadership - Own design outcomes across a portfolio of Fortune 500 accounts, from executive relationships and QBRs to the quality of what ships - Serve as a trusted design authority at the C-suite level, influencing client strategy and product direction, not just delivery - Partner with strategic consultants and business development teams to shape how design is positioned and sold in new and existing engagements - Drive alignment in complex, high-stakes situations, bringing teams back on track and bringing clients along with clarity and confidence Team Building & Culture - Lead, mentor, and grow a team of over 100 designers, content designers, creative services consultants, and design leaders, creating the conditions for exceptional work and meaningful careers - Recruit actively and elevate TELUS Digital's presence in the design community through thought leadership, networking, and external visibility - Build a studio culture that balances craft ambition with practical delivery, where feedback is honest, standards are high, and people want to do their best work Business Impact - Deliver on revenue targets within your portfolio while identifying opportunities to deepen and expand client relationships - Bring a sharp commercial lens to resourcing, investment decisions, and account health, not just design quality - Contribute to the infrastructure of the practice: hiring, playbooks, training, and capability-building initiatives COMPETENCIES - 10+ years in design leadership, with significant experience in a client-facing environment such as an agency, consultancy, or embedded within complex enterprise engagements - A clear track record of leading design teams that produce best-in-class digital products. Work that sets the bar, wins recognition, and consistently raises the standard for what's possible in the space - Proven experience managing and developing senior designers and design leaders, including performance management and career growth - Fluency in the full product development lifecycle from strategy and concepting through engineering handoff and launch across multi-disciplinary teams - The executive presence to present to C-suite stakeholders and the coaching ability to develop that same skill in others - A track record of building trust with clients over time, not just delivering projects - Experience managing the business side of design engagements: scope, margin, resourcing, and stakeholder alignment - Commitment to building inclusive teams with demonstrated experience mentoring designers from underrepresented backgrounds - Comfortable leading distributed teams and navigating the realities of remote-first collaboration EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER At TELUS Digital, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. All aspects of employment, including the decision to hire and promote, are based on applicants’ qualifications, merits, competence and performance without regard to any characteristic related to diversity. We will only use the information you provide to process your application and to produce tracking statistics. Since we do not request personal data deemed sensitive, we ask you to abstain from sharing that information with us. For more information on how we use your information, see our Privacy Policy https://www.telusdigital.com/privacy-policy.