Senior Director, Brand Studio

Meet the Team

The Brand Studio team at HashiCorp is made up of multi-disciplinary, highly talented designers and marketers. Our team sits within the Marketing organization at HashiCorp, partnering closely with peers across all Marketing departments.

What We Do

Our team’s mission is to express the value of our brand through multiple channels and mediums—spanning digital to physical, static to kinetic—to engage, educate, and establish trust with both practitioners who love our products and enterprises looking to enable their businesses at scale with HashiCorp. 

The Brand Studio works with our audiences at heart and our ‘beauty works better’ principle in hand. We believe the collaborative process can and should be engaging for all, continually improve with insights, and regularly deliver positive outcomes for our business. Through our work, we strive to build a remarkable enterprise brand by delivering high-quality design and continual brand innovation.

About the Role

As Senior Director, Brand Studio, you'll report directly to the VP of Corporate Marketing and drive brand and creative work for HashiCorp. This role is a high-visibility, high-impact opportunity for the right individual excited to have a hand in evolving HashiCorp's brand and brand reach, and will have oversight of Brand Design, Event and Experiential Design, and Brand Marketing teams, shaping our brand story across a variety of mediums. You will foster relationships across our Marketing organization, working closely with a variety of Marketing stakeholders to develop a shared strategy, and co-owning the responsibility for delivering world-class experiences that accelerate our customers' success. You will be responsible for managing and running the Brand Studio and to mentor, guide, support, and grow the team members.

In your cover letter, please include a link to your online portfolio, your CV or LinkedIn profile, and a few words to describe why HashiCorp is interesting to you. Please include specifics about your past experiences that would be relevant for us to consider for this role. 

About HashiCorp

HashiCorp is an innovator and leader in the cloud infrastructure automation space, and the provider of The Infrastructure Cloud. HashiCorp is setting the standard for how enterprises manage their infrastructure and security in the cloud. We are a public company, and announced in April 2024 that we are being acquired by IBM. The acquisition is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2025. The acquisition will set up a unique and interesting brand challenge — as a stand-alone entity within IBM, we will need to maintain and evolve the brand values and creative execution that makes HashiCorp distinct, while also taking advantage of the 100-plus-year history of IBM. The leader of our Brand Studio will be an important part of this brand journey.

We're looking for someone with:

• A conceptual mind and passion for a variety of storytelling mediums, with excellence in clarifying and communicating
• The ability to run multiple distinct but collaborative teams supporting the brand
• A proven track record to handle the managerial aspects of running the group, as well as the creative direction for the brand. Will need to make and lead important prioritization and resourcing decisions for the team.
• Ability to provide mentorship for the existing “player/coach” managers and the individual designers on the team
• A proven ability to create and direct high-quality campaign and content creative
• Experience delivering big ideas for cloud-based software businesses, built through input and collaboration around what we’ve built so far
• A track record for managing a high volume of creative and campaign types in parallel
• 10+ years of relevant design or art direction experience for technical and product-driven companies, including 5 years of management experience with increasing responsibility
• Experience working with a distributed team and the necessary processes and tools (Slack, Zoom, Asana, or similar)
• Experience with enterprise, cloud, and/or SaaS brands 

In this role you can expect to:

• Hire, grow, coach, and mentor the Brand Studio team to foster growth and a positive work environment                
• Maintain momentum around creative concepts and ensure the Brand Studio team's responsibility for bringing them into the world
• Shoulder the responsibility for quality and completion of all work delivered by the Brand Studio team
• Lead studio and creative strategy, while encouraging participation from the various voices on the team. Your perspective and voice will help give shape to our ever evolving studio culture
• Serve as a liaison between the extended Marketing and Brand Studio teams, as well as some select other teams, including the People team
• Ensure designs and content reflect consistently and positively the brand image and company principles
• Find and develop working relationships with creative and production vendors, strengthen partnerships with current vendors, and conceive/execute creative
• Play an active role in the brand transition over the next few years as part of IBM 

You may be a good addition to the team if you have:

• An impressive conceptual outlook, and an ability to produce original ideas
• High-level creative thinking and the confidence to use it
• Knowledge of how to develop brand identities through multi-channel marketing
• Motivation and the desire to execute to the highest standard
• A drive to mentor and grow the Brand Studio team members 
• The ability to deliver campaigns, event experiences, and brand implementations that generate results
• The confidence to share and present ideas internally and externally
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Attributes we look for:

• Empathy for end-users and consumers
• Humility and a learning mindset
• Listening to understand
• Explain complex ideas simply
• Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills
• Reflective
• Responsible and takes ownership over work