Creative Design Manager

We believe that the way people interact with their finances will drastically improve in the next few years. We’re dedicated to empowering this transformation by building the tools and experiences that thousands of developers use to create their own products. Plaid powers the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life. We work with thousands of companies like Venmo, SoFi, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks to make it easy for people to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they want to use. Plaid’s network covers 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Washington D.C., London and Amsterdam. We are Plaid's Creative Design team — a group of brand designers, production designers, and presentation designers who bring the Plaid brand to life across every channel and surface. We partner closely with Product Design in a unified design organization that reports directly to the CEO. Please visit https://designedbyplaid.com/ to learn more about the Design team! Our creative studio drives visual consistency, quality, and velocity across marketing channels — owning creative execution for performance marketing, paid social, webinars, tech talks, and organic content — and we partner closely with Growth Marketing, PMM, Comms, and external agencies to get it done. As the Creative Design Manager for our Creative Studio team, you will: - Coach, review, and uplevel craft across a team of brand designers, production designers, and presentation designers - Lead creative direction and execution across all marketing surfaces — paid, social, webinars, and campaigns - Work with Design Ops to manage pipeline and prioritization of incoming marketing requests - Build and implement scalable systems of Figma templates, production tooling, and creative standards - Manage external agencies and contractors across production design, creative, and presentation - Partner with Brand and Growth Marketing leads to concept, plan, and ship campaigns end-to-end - Uphold Plaid's refreshed brand across all marketing channels and find the right moments to help it evolve - Contribute to Creative Design leadership — shaping process, culture, and creative direction across the org Qualifications - 9+ years of professional design experience in brand, visual, or marketing design - 5+ years managing brand designers, production designers, or both - A portfolio showing consistent, high-craft execution across multi-channel marketing work - Strong understanding of brand and performance marketing creative (paid social, display, email, landing pages) - Proven ability to work as a player/coach — giving direct feedback while staying close to the craft - Experience building scalable systems, templates, and self-serve creative tooling - Experience briefing, managing, and scaling work with external agencies and contractors - Proficiency with modern efficiency tools — Claude, Figma Buzz, Jitter, Runway, Magnific, or similar - Strong communication skills and a track record of effective cross-functional partnership Bonus points for: - Background in B2B SaaS or fintech - Experience directing/prompting animation, illustration, video - Comfort interpreting creative performance data and translating it into better work Our mission at Plaid is to unlock financial freedom for everyone. To support that mission, we seek to build a diverse team of driven individuals who care deeply about making the financial ecosystem more equitable. We recognize that strong qualifications can come from both prior work experiences and lived experiences. We encourage you to apply to a role even if your experience doesn't fully match the job description. We are always looking for team members that will bring something unique to Plaid! Plaid is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and values diversity at our company. We do not discrimi