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Introduction

IBM seeks a Global Creative Director to lead Brand Identity and Systems Design within IBM Marketing and Communications. You'll steward one of the world's most recognized and enduring brands—driving its evolution to reflect who IBM is today and where we're headed tomorrow.

This is an opportunity to shape brand expression at enterprise scale. You'll bridge brand strategy, product design, marketing, and technology innovation—advancing IBM's design language and visual identity across a complex, global organization. You'll work with the resources, platform, and creative freedom to make lasting impact on how IBM shows up in the world.

IBM's legacy is unmatched, but legacy alone doesn't drive relevance. As a company at the forefront of enterprise AI, hybrid cloud, and quantum computing—we need our brand to reflect the pace of our innovation. Your mission is to close the gap between what IBM does and how IBM is perceived—making our brand as dynamic, accessible, and forward-thinking as the technology we build.

Your role and responsibilities

You'll lead the systems, standards, and creative vision that bring consistency and excellence to every touchpoint. You'll build infrastructure that enables thousands of designers, marketers, and partners to do their best work while maintaining the integrity of the IBM brand.

You're a systems thinker with creative vision and operational rigor. You understand that managing an iconic global brand requires both reverence for its equity and courage to evolve it. You've architected design systems at scale, led distributed creative teams, and navigated the organizational complexity of enterprise brand work.

You bring a modern approach to brand craft—fluent in contemporary tools and workflows, including AI-augmented design. You see generative tools as accelerators of creative possibility and vehicles to drive productivity. You've experimented hands-on and can articulate both opportunities and guardrails.

Most importantly, you're energized by the challenge of transforming a legacy brand for contemporary relevance. You champion a culture of experimentation alongside a commitment to excellence. You build trust through transparency, develop talent through investment, and lead with optimism through change.

Strategic Brand Leadership

• Partner with executive leadership and corporate brand strategy to shape IBM's brand architecture across the enterprise
• Lead brand system evolution for IBM's Design Language, acquisitions, and emerging products
• Translate business objectives into actionable brand design strategies that drive measurable outcomes
• Serve as a primary design voice in senior stakeholder conversations
• Build and nurture design guilds as forums for collaboration and problem-solving
• Foster experimentation, knowledge-sharing, and continuous learning across the global design community

Systems Design & Scalability

• Architect comprehensive brand design systems enabling consistent, high-quality work across IBM
• Oversee IBM Brand Center, IBM Design Language, and Experience Guides as living platforms
• Develop templates, toolkits, component libraries, and automation making excellence accessible
• Create governance frameworks balancing consistency with flexibility

AI-Powered Design Innovation

• Define quality in AI-augmented workflows. Set standards for when AI outputs are appropriate versus when traditional craft is essential.
• Pilot new tools and scale what proves valuable, while preserving brand integrity.
• Be explicit about transparency, rights and ethics, accessibility, and human creativity's central role. Build systems and principles that enable responsible innovation.
• Invest in skill building. Develop competencies in prompt engineering, tool evaluation, model training, output refinement.
• Measure holistically--track efficiency gains, asset performance, team satisfaction, and workflow transformation.

Global Team Management and Collaboration

• Lead and develop a distributed team spanning multiple design specialties
• Build cohesive team dynamics across geographies while optimizing for individual growth
• Provide coaching, mentorship, and clear expectations enabling excellence
• Navigate organizational change while maintaining team morale and operational stability
• Maintain relationships with IBM Design, IBM.com, product content teams, and external partners
• Collaborate with agencies ensuring brand consistency across channels
• Engage with technology teams to build custom tools, plugins, and platforms enhancing design capabilities
• Manage always-on programs: iconography, logotypes, merchandise, stationery, templates, and digital assets
• Oversee resource allocation, budget management, and partner relationships
• Drive awards submissions and PR initiatives elevating IBM external profile in the design community

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

What You Bring:

• 12+ years in brand design, identity systems, or creative leadership
• 5+ years managing large, distributed creative teams with proven talent development
• Track record architecting and scaling design systems for global, complex organizations
• Portfolio showcasing systems thinking, brand strategy, and multi-channel execution
• Experience at the intersection of brand, product, and technology
• Leaders are expected to spend time with their teams and clients and therefore are generally expected to be in the workplace a minimum of three days a week, subject to business needs

Technical Expertise

• Advanced Figma proficiency: component libraries, variants, automation, plugin development
• Hands-on experience with generative AI tools and prompt engineering for visual design
• Expert proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Keynote

Strategic Capabilities

• Exceptional systems thinking: seeing patterns, identifying consolidation opportunities, architecting scalable solutions
• Experience translating business strategy into design strategy and articulating design ROI
• Track record influencing executives and managing complex stakeholder relationships
• Ability to balance brand consistency with flexibility and innovation

Leadership & Communication

• Outstanding presentation and storytelling skills; clarity and impact in complex communications
• Diplomatic relationship-building across organizational levels
• Courageous, principled decision-making on behalf of the brand
• Growth mindset with commitment to continuous learning
• Optimistic, steady presence inspiring teams through uncertainty

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Understanding of design operations, digital asset management systems, and workflows enabling large-scale production
• Familiarity with design systems (Carbon), data visualization, and product UI/UX
• Comfort with code-adjacent work and developer collaboration
• Experience with brand architecture challenges including M&A integration