Senior Managing Director, Brand Studio

NerdWallet seeks a seasoned account / creative operations leader to run our internal Brand Creative Studio team. In this role, you will be leading a team of producers, designers, content strategists, animators, and engineers responsible for the vision and execution of NerdWallet’s brand identity across internal and external communications channels.  

Our Brand Studio team operates as its own internal agency - internal clients have allocated budgets and submit project requests on a quarterly basis. You are responsible for running this agency - actively seeking ways to optimize and improve the operating model such that you’re efficiently and effectively meeting the objectives of your internal clients and NerdWallet business as a whole. While you are the biggest champion and advocate for your creative team, your focus will be creating the conditions for their success by focusing on client management and agency operations, not on creative decision-making.

This role requires excellent leadership skills, a desire to work collaboratively to achieve business outcomes, a consistent track record of delivering results through effective creative execution, and the ability to develop and inspire longer-term creative ambitions that help establish NerdWallet as the most memorable and beloved brand in the personal finance space. 

Where you will make an impact:

• You effectively attract and retain a high-performing team; optimizing time, talent and resources to meet the performance expectations of each of your internal clients, while making sure employees are challenged and clear on the opportunity for impact within the organization.  
• You are seen as a leader throughout the organization who can influence without authority. When clients come to you with challenges, they trust you will solve them in the best way, because you deeply understand our business objectives and are comfortable operating in ambiguity in pursuit of what is best for the organization, alongside your own operational & strategic objectives. 
• You inspire best-in-class creative and risk-taking amongst your team, never settling for the status-quo to make NerdWallet a distinct, differentiated and beloved brand in a crowded category.  

You are

• Business Minded: Understand how to leverage creative to solve complex business challenges; proactively identify opportunities for effective creative work to drive business performance on and offsite. 
• Analytical: Strong pulse on utilization & burn rates, team performance, client feedback in order to optimize and improve campaign over campaign. 
• Solutions-Oriented: Strong 1:1 relationships with internal clients and leadership team, actively solves for their challenges & opportunities via best staff, best approach & process, best creative. Approach business problems with curiosity and creativity; you’re someone who naturally brings a flexible “first principles” mindset to problem-solving. 
• Creative Champion: Pulse on creative community, trends, tools and technology;  Obsessively thinking about the next “thing” by monitoring the landscape, competitors and consumers trends.  

Your experience:

We recognize not everyone will meet all of the criteria. If you meet most of the criteria below and you’re excited about the opportunity and willing to learn, we’d love to hear from you.

• 12+ years of work experience in internal creative teams / creative agency environments 
• 6 years of managerial and leadership experience 
• Optimizing process & operations to solve unique client objectives
• Optimizing staff to solve unique client objectives - this includes augmenting with contractor and agency talent as appropriate. 
• Demonstrated track record of delivering business outcomes via creative solutions
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with cross-discipline teams and partners 
• Proficient in using operations and task management tools like Wrike, Jira, Asana, Google Suite
• Familiarity with creative tools like Adobe and Figma

Where:

• This role will be based in San Francisco, CA, or remote (based in the U.S.).
• We believe great work can be done anywhere. No matter where you are based, NerdWallet offers benefits and perks to support the physical, financial, and emotional well being of you and your family.

What we offer:

Work Hard, Stay Balanced (Life’s a series of balancing acts, eh?)

• Industry-leading medical, dental, and vision health care plans for employees and their dependents
• Rejuvenation Policy – Flexible Time Off + 13 holidays + 4 Mental Health Days Off
• New Parent Le