Creative Director

Application Deadline: Please submit your application by 5:00 pm EST on Friday, October 2nd, 2026.

Application Instructions

In addition to a resume, please submit:

• Instead of a traditional cover letter, provide a brief statement outlining your approach to creative leadership, team mentorship, and how you balance artistic innovation with organizational goals.

Intro to Position

NPR is one of the country’s most trusted brands, but its reputation was built in a media landscape that no longer exists. Audiences have scattered across owned platforms, social video, and a dozen competitors fighting for the same attention. The organizations winning that fight are the ones willing to look and sound different, not just distribute more. This role exists to help NPR make that shift real.

This is, and is not, a caretaker role for an established brand. It's a build and evolution role: new formats, new visual language, a creative team stood up for video at a scale the organization hasn't operated in before. 

You'll report to the SVP of Brand & Communications and work closely with Product, Audience Insights, Marketing, and Editorial to shift a beloved legacy brand into one that can compete with new creators and challengers.

Responsibilities

Drive a more distinctive cohesive brand in a saturated market

• Establish technical brand standards, visual principles, and digital design systems that make NPR’s visual expression instantly recognizable across direct-to-audience platforms. 
• Build platform-native video formats and visual frameworks that drive industry-leading differentiation, compelling audiences to choose NPR over thousands of alternative journalism and entertainment options 
• Push beyond generic institutional and media-industry conventions to create work with greater personality, clarity, emotion, and cultural relevance.
• Translate organizational values, editorial priorities, and public service mission into standardized motion assets, video packages, and platform-native visual frameworks. 
• Analyze market landscapes and digital competitor trends to ensure NPR’s video and motion visual language remains distinct, modern, and culturally relevant. 

Build creative capacity for an owned-and-operated future

• Define the technical visual frameworks and motion standards required to integrate video seamlessly across NPR’s owned digital ecosystem (websites, mobile apps, newsletters, and membership portals). 
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Editorial teams to establish a cohesive UI/UX and motion experience across owned platform touchpoints. 
• Build modular, scalable design systems and template kits that enable teams across the organization to independently publish brand-aligned digital content. 
• Ensure that creative work supports a deeper direct relationship with audiences rather than treating owned platforms simply as distribution channels.
• Help develop the visual and verbal conventions that make the organization’s digital experiences feel distinctive, intentional, and connected.
• Identify opportunities to use design, storytelling, video, motion, and other creative tools to increase engagement with owned experiences.
• Utilize audience analytics and engagement data to continuously optimize digital assets and direct-to-audience visual experiences. 

Build a modern video and motion capability

• Establish production standards, camera/lighting guidelines, motion graphic templates, and editing signatures for short-form, social, explanatory, and talent-led video formats. 
• Procure, maintain, and manage specialized video studio hardware, camera packages, lighting setups, field audio gear, and editing suites 
• Partner with Editorial and other teams to determine where technical brand video and motion graphics complement editorial production.
• Develop recognizable approaches to motion, editing, typography, graphics, sound, pacing, and visual storytelling.
• Ensure that video is treated as a core creative medium rather than an adaptation of work conceived for print or static digital formats.
• Supervise a dedicated, technical video and motion production squad (2 direct reports), managing daily project allocations, post-production workflows, and technical skill development 

Drive creative excellence

• Establish operational SLAs, resource management models, and quality-assurance protocols to scale high-volume video publishing efficiently. 
• Lead the creative development of campaigns, executive communications, fundraising materials, events, presentations, reports, digital experiences, and other strategic initiatives.
• Ensure creative work is aligned with organizational priorities, audience needs, accessibility standards, and brand guidelines.
• Encourage experimentation while maintaining consistency and quality.
• Enforce strict compliance with federal digital accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1, closed captioning, color contrast, screen-reader compatibility) across all motion and video deliverables. 

The above duties and responsibilities are not an exhaustive list of required responsibilities, duties and skills. Other duties may be assigned, and this job description can be modified at any time.

Minimum Qualifications 

• 8+ years of progressive creative leadership experience specializing in digital media, video production, or motion systems architecture within an in-house team or agency environment. 
• Exceptional portfolio demonstrating advanced technical mastery  conceptual thinking, creative direction, visual sophistication, and digital product visual identity across multi-platform ecosystems.
• Demonstrated experience helping a brand evolve, modernize, or become more differentiated.
• Deep technical proficiency in industry-standard video and motion software suites (Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Figma design systems) and the changing ways audiences discover, consume, and engage with media.
• Meaningful experience developing or directing video and motion work.
• Demonstrated ability to build relationships, influence cross-functional partners, and navigate complex organizational structures.
• Experience managing agencies, freelancers, and creative budgets.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with a media, technology, cultural, entertainment, consumer, nonprofit, or mission-driven brand undergoing significant transformation.
• Experience helping an established or legacy brand evolve for new audiences or platforms.
• Experience supporting direct-to-consumer, subscription, membership, or other owned-and-operated digital strategies.
• Experience building or expanding an internal video, motion, or multimedia creative capability.
• Experience developing enterprise design systems or brand governance frameworks.
• Familiarity with audience research, brand measurement, accessibility standards, and emerging creative technologies.
• Demonstrated experience directly managing technical creative personnel, such as video editors, motion designers, and digital production leads. 

Required Skills/Competencies

• Strong technical storytelling instincts across motion, video, and platform-native digital formats. 
• Fluency in visual systems, digital motion design, video production workflows, and digital brand expression. 
• Deep curiosity about media, culture, design technology, motion trends, and changing audience behavior on owned digital platforms.
• Strong people leadership, technical team management, coaching, and talent-development skills.
• Comfort leading creative/digital visual transformation within and systems integration within an established organization.
• An ability to respect the equity of a legacy brand without being constrained by its history when building new platform formats.
• Excellent collaboration and relationship-building skills across cross functional teams.
• An ability to communicate the strategic, technical, and architectural reasoning behind creative choices.
• Comfort navigating ambiguity, organizational complexity, and competing priorities.
• Strong decision-making and prioritization skills.
• A commitment to accessibility, inclusion, and creating work for a broad and diverse public.

Education Requirements

• Equivalent hands-on experience, in lieu of a bachelor’s degree.

Work Location & Requirements

• NPR Hybrid Permitted: This is a hybrid permitted role. The employee will be required to be in the office at the Washington, D.C. or New York City location at least 3 days a week. The employee must also be in commuting distance to Washington, D.C or New York City.

Job Type

• This is a full-time, exempt position.

Compensation

Salary Range: The U.S.-based anticipated salary range for this opportunity is $147,000-$165,000 plus benefits. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salaries NPR expects to provide for new hires for the position across all US locations.

NPR Benefits: NPR provides comprehensive benefits for employees and dependents. Regular, full-time employees scheduled to work 30 hours or more per week are eligible to enroll in NPR’s benefits options. Benefits include access to health and wellness, paid time off, and financial well-being. Plan options include medical, dental, vision, life/ accidental death and dismemberment, long-term disability, short-term disability, and voluntary retirement savings to all eligible NPR employees.

Does this sound like you? If so, we want to hear from you.

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