Associate Creative Director, Visual Design

ABOUT STRAVA Strava is the app for active people. With over 200 million athletes in more than 185 countries, it’s more than tracking workouts—it’s where people make progress together, from new habits to new personal bests. No matter your sport or how you track it, Strava’s got you covered. Find your crew, crush your goals, and make every effort count. Start your journey https://www.strava.com/subscription with Strava today. Our mission is simple: to motivate people to live their best active lives. We believe in the power of movement to connect and drive people forward. About This Role Strava's Creative Team is behind how the brand shows up in the world, across brand campaigns, GTMs, social, partnerships, product, paid media and beyond. Sitting inside Marketing, we work closely with Marketing, PMM, Growth, Brand, and Product to scale one of the most recognized active lifestyle brands globally. We're a high-craft team that holds every piece of work to a high standard, and we do it with mission and purpose. As the Associate Creative Director, Visual Design on the Marketing Creative team, you'll set the creative direction for brand expression across everything we make, connecting marketing strategy, product vision, and contemporary global culture into cohesive, high-impact work. You'll manage a small team of experienced designers, own visual direction on major workstreams across brand campaigns, paid social, tentpole moments, and GTMs, and partner closely with the Executive Creative Director on strategy and standards. This is a player-coach role: you're still a significant producer yourself, and you lead a team of designers to set a high bar and direct creative leadership. The blend of strong creative craft, people management, and marketing fluency is what makes this role distinct. We follow a flexible hybrid model that translates to more than half of your time on-site in our San Francisco or New York City office, three days per week. What You'll Do - Own visual design ideation and direction on brand campaigns, paid and organic social, GTMs and product marketing campaigns, and tentpole activations, from concept through final delivery, ensuring every output ladders up to Strava's brand strategy and business goals - Partner with the ECD on creative strategy, bringing a sharp visual POV to early concepting and a detail-obsessed eye to execution, maintaining craft quality and visual cohesion across every format and collaborator - Build and evolve multi-format design systems and visual frameworks that scale across digital, social, and experiential touchpoints - Shape how Strava's brand expression evolves over time: visual identity, typography, photography, video, color systems, seasonal design language, and how we show up in culture - Translate cultural signals, sport moments, and campaign insights into visual ideas that earn attention, not just impression, drive business goals - Present work to cross-functional partners and leadership with clarity and conviction, connecting creative decisions to strategy and business outcomes - Directly manage 2–3 experienced designers: regular 1:1s, career development, direct feedback on craft and creative direction, and performance conversations - Partner and manage external agencies, freelancers and vendors to bring the right talent and expertise to the right work What You'll Bring to the Team - 10+ years of experience in visual design with deep command of typography, layout, color theory, photography, motion, video and visual hierarchy; background spanning both agency and in-house environments - A portfolio with exceptional craft across brand, campaign, digital, and multi-format work, the kind of output that stops scrolling and earns cultural attention - Proven experience upleveling a creative team, you've managed experienced designers with a genuine standard for what great looks like, and you enable your teams to grow and develop through successful mentorship - A strategic mindset: you can concept and pitch an idea as convincingly as you can execute it, and you connect creative decisions to brand and business impact - Experience designing for paid and organic social (TikTok, Meta, YouTube) with a clear understanding of how creative choices affect performance - Comfort with ambiguity and scale: you've built in fast-moving, high-growth environments and you're energized by the challenge of doing great work quickly - Motion sensibility, whether you create it yourself or direct it, you think in movement and know how to push static ideas into dynamic formats - Experience working within and contributing to cohesive brand systems; global brand and international campaign experience is a plus For more information on benefits, please click here https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTkFMPz3eCjd0FgQ28VWnK4d2BEnzGyaSFGwATR-dQdBb9HxZgay6kboqnT0-V-qaBDzSvYIzI76vT5/pub. WHY JOIN US? Movement brings us together. At Strava, we’re building the world’s largest community of active people, helping them stay motivated and achieve their goals. Our global team is passionate about making movement fun, meaningful, and accessible to everyone. Whether you’re shaping the technology, growing our community, or driving innovation, your work at Strava makes an impact. When you join Strava, you’re not just joining a company—you’re joining a movement. If you’re ready to bring your energy, ideas, and drive, let’s build something incredible together. Strava builds software that makes the best part of our athletes’ days even better. Just as we’re deeply committed to unlocking their potential, we’re dedicated to providing a world-class, inclusive workplace where our employees can grow and thrive, too. We’re backed by Sequoia Capital, TCV, Madrone Partners and Jackson Square Ventures, and we’re expanding in order to exceed the needs of our growing community of global athletes. Our culture reflects our community. We are continuously striving to hire and engage teammates from all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives because we know we are a stronger team together. Strava is an equal opportunity employer. In keeping with the values of Strava, we make all employment decisions including hiring, evaluation, termination, promotional and training opportunities, without regard to race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, physical handicap, mental disability, medical condition, disability, gender or identity or expression, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, marital status, height and/or weight. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation. California Consumer Protection Act Applicant Notice https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSc8y6On4NlP5s12hf4kmWe_pvenVyQ78TbtVaz_clROhj9ADQ6kY4YScglBIuY2joKFKalOReX7vP_/pub