Creative Lead (Shopify Plus & Digital Experience)

We are looking for a Creative Lead to join our Operations department, working cross-functionally across all delivery pods. This is a senior position responsible for setting and upholding the standard for visual design, user experience and creative delivery across our Shopify practice. You will combine exceptional hands-on design craft with team leadership, commercial awareness and a deep understanding of how successful Shopify experiences are designed, built and maintained.

You will lead the design discipline across all delivery pods, working alongside Project Managers, Development Leads, Frontend Developers, Solutions Consultants and Product Owners. Your remit will span discovery, research, creative direction, prototyping, development handoff, production design assurance and ongoing optimisation.

You will create distinctive brand experiences within the capabilities of Shopify themes, including Dawn, Horizon, premium themes and our proprietary theme. You will own design architecture and partner with Development Leads on technical implementation, ensuring designs map accurately to theme capabilities and agreed component libraries.

You will establish design systems that are actively used in delivery, implement effective AI-assisted workflows, and help win standalone UX/UI and design engagements. Success means improving design quality, creativity, consistency and speed while protecting client outcomes and project profitability.

Leadership Remit

This is a leadership role with hands-on delivery responsibilities on selected strategic or complex projects. You will line manage and develop the design team, set standards across pods and support Sales and Solutions with design opportunities. Routine pod delivery will be led by assigned designers, with your oversight and support. Priorities and capacity across hands-on delivery, management, sales support and practice development will be agreed with the Delivery Director and reviewed regularly.

Key Responsibilities & Duties

1. Creative Direction, Design Craft & Quality

• Own the agency's visual design standard, ensuring work demonstrates strong art direction, typography, composition, imagery, interaction design and brand expression.
• Translate client positioning and customer needs into distinctive, commercially effective experiences, using reusable theme capabilities creatively.
• Lead hands-on design for selected enterprise or strategically important projects, setting a clear example of the expected quality.
• Establish regular design critiques and quality reviews, providing specific, constructive feedback and approving key outputs before client presentation.
• Balance visual ambition with accessibility, usability, performance, technical feasibility and the agreed budget.

2. Discovery, Research & Client Communication

• Establish standardised discovery playbooks, creative briefs, workshop templates and presentation frameworks for the design team.
• Define customer journeys, user needs, business objectives, content requirements and measurable success criteria with clients and the wider project team.
• Lead proportionate customer research, usability testing and analysis of behavioural data, using findings to inform and validate designs before development.
• Review discovery and research outputs for completeness, technical accuracy and alignment with commercial objectives.
• Train and coach designers to facilitate workshops, explain design decisions, manage feedback and present confidently to senior stakeholders.
• Support complex enterprise workshops, challenging client discussions and escalations where additional creative leadership is required.

3. Shopify Theme-Based Design & Merchant Usability

• Maintain a practical understanding of Dawn, Horizon, premium themes and our proprietary theme, including their sections, blocks, templates, settings and responsive behaviour.
• Create and maintain Figma libraries that map accurately to the selected theme's capabilities and implementation patterns.
• Clearly identify native theme capabilities, configurable adaptations and bespoke development within proposed designs, agreeing scope and implications with Solutions and Development Leads.
• Design for mobile and desktop customer journeys, with particular attention to mobile navigation, product discovery, product selection and purchase flows.
• Design for merchants maintaining the website, ensuring sections and templates are practical to configure, populate and reuse.
• Document content and imagery requirements, configuration options and relevant limitations so clients and delivery teams understand how designs will work in practice.

4. Design Systems & Integration with Development

• Build, implement and maintain scalable Figma design systems using shared tokens, variables, auto-layout, component properties and documented patterns.
• Establish agreed mappings between design components and Shopify theme sections, blocks, settings and templates, including components specific to our agency starter theme.
• Work with developers to align design and code libraries through shared naming, documentation, versioning and change processes.
• Specify responsive behaviour, interaction states, validation, loading, empty and error states, alongside accessibility and content guidance.
• Integrate design systems into estimation, backlog refinement, development handoff, implementation and quality assurance.
• Define ownership and approval processes for new components, changes and exceptions, keeping libraries accurate as production implementations evolve.
• Support Theme App Extensions, checkout extensibility and headless storefront design where required by the agreed project scope, working with the relevant technical specialists.

AI-Assisted Design & Rapid Prototyping

• Implement and maintain AI-assisted workflows that improve design quality, consistency, speed or delivery cost, with clear evidence of their impact.
• Evaluate and select appropriate tools for ideation, prototyping, asset production and repetitive tasks, based on delivery needs and demonstrated value.
• Establish reusable briefs, prompts, reference materials and review criteria grounded in client brand guidelines, design systems and Shopify theme capabilities.
• Use interactive prototypes to test customer journeys and clarify requirements, identifying where generated outputs require adaptation before theme implementation.
• Maintain human review of design decisions and generated outputs, checking usability, accessibility, technical feasibility and brand accuracy.
• Establish appropriate practices for client confidentiality, approved data use, asset provenance and usage rights.
• Train the team, document effective workflows and measure adoption and results. Assess time savings alongside output quality, rework and tool costs.

6. Pod Delivery & Commercial Ownership

• Partner with PMs, Solutions Consultants and Development Leads to scope and estimate design work, identify dependencies and agree deliverables and acceptance criteria.
• Contribute to capacity planning, backlog refinement and relevant delivery ceremonies, ensuring designers have realistic priorities and sufficient time for quality work.
• Own design estimates and resource planning with PMs, monitoring budget adherence and addressing delivery risks early.
• Manage design feedback, approval milestones and change control, making the impact of additional requirements clear.
• Balance