At Merkle, we are champions for meaningful progress and aim to be a force for good—for our people, clients, industry, and society. We keep our people at the center, creating space for growth, understanding, and learning so they can grow. We are a technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company. For over 30 years, Fortune 1,000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with us to build and maximize the value of their customer portfolios. We embed diversity in our mindset, products, and teams to empower an inclusive, equitable, and culturally fluent environment. Building this culture within our teams makes us better collaborators and our clients, driving better outcomes for all. Merkle is an agency of dentsu.

Are you a Digital Group Creative Director (UX) passionate about human behavior? Is your approach allowing you to think beyond wireframes and workflows to deliver more holistic user journeys? Do you embrace complex problems and turn them into compelling strategies? You bring an understanding of translating needs and strategy into realized design. Reporting to the ECD, you provide a perspective that influences clients and your team and understand the rationale and approach to what is designed and why. You bring an understanding of user-centered design, content strategy, copywriting, front-end development, brand strategy, and multi-channel marketing strategy with core strengths and experience in information architecture and interaction design across digital channels. Preference will be given to greater Los Angeles, CA, or West Coast candidates.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with our creative leads to shape and evolve our experience practice.
• Develop relationships with main client partners, and collaborate with strategy and business development teams to pursue and develop new business opportunities.
• Lead diverse teams to create solutions for clients through conceptual designs rooted in strategy and rationale derived from essential business and user needs.
• Design the best experiences for clients by balancing users and need to identify opportunities based on research and best practices.
• Work with strategic partners to develop a shared understanding of business and user need through scenarios and journeys.
• Define creative process tailored to the needs of a project, and oversee the development of UX artifacts such as organizational models, journeys, sitemaps, taxonomy, navigation, wireframes, flows, and prototypes with the ability to present and sell through to senior client partners.
• Guide the development of frameworks that describe the main aspects of a proposed experience and how it reconciles business and user needs; build top-level deliverables based on user-centered design techniques.
• Work with delivery teams to estimate, plan, and build successful creative for complex projects.
• Collaborate with leadership and hiring to recruit creative talent to grow our innovative capabilities.
• Identify opportunities to create benefits and improve the user experience.
• Define best practices related to persona development/behavioral segmentation; coach teams to align personas/segmentation with client/project goals and ensure that they are derived from behavioral segments/user profiles; ensure that scenarios respond to essential user needs and illustrate main business opportunities.
• Work with strategic partners to develop an understanding of business and user need through scenarios and journeys.
• Collaborate with staffing to make project allocation decisions.

• Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of industry experience in a well-established design/creative role with agency experience.
• Mastery of interaction design (.com, cross-channel marketing, test and learn), information architecture, and user-centered design across channels, devices, and media, coupled with the ability to balance and translate business and user needs into opportunities shown through concepts.
• Knowledge of marketing and design systems, and experiences, with conceptual and design abilities.
• Be well-versed in user-centered design methods and techniques
• Expert in design and prototyping tools - Figma, XD, Sketch, InVision, Illustrator, and Photoshop.
• Must have been in a client-facing role and have project experience working with teams on large-scale, long-term projects.
• Empower growth in others through empathy, servant leadership, and the ability to understand someone's guide, goals, and how to get the best from them on a personal level.
• Guide preparation of large client workshops to communicate essential themes from partner interviews; work with the team to ensure agreement on main success factors.
• Lead, and provide expertise in participatory design/user testing sessions and behavioral in-context and ethnographic research events across accounts; manage client involvement in research.
• A portfolio with examples that exemplifies excellent UX theory and research, compelling ideas, and solid usability designs.

The anticipated salary range for this position is up to $225,000, based on multiple factors, including relevant experience, skills, and other job-related qualifications. Pay ranges in locations other than Colorado may differ based on labor market wage rates in those locations. A range of medical, dental, vision, 401(k) matching, paid time off, and other benefits are available. For more information about dentsu benefits, please visit https://dentsubenefitsplus.com/

About dentsu international

Part of Dentsu Group, Dentsu International is a network designed for what’s next, helping clients predict and plan for disruptive future opportunities and create new paths to growth in the sustainable economy. Dentsu delivers people-focused solutions and services to drive better business and societal outcomes. This is delivered through five global leadership brands - Carat, Dentsu Creative, dentsu X, iProspect and Merkle, each with deep specialisms.

Dentsu International’s radically collaborative team of diverse creators unifies people, clients and capabilities through horizontal creativity to help clients create culture, change society, and invent the future.

Powered by 100% renewable energy, Dentsu International operates in over 145 markets worldwide with more than 46,000 dedicated specialists, and partners with 95 of the top 100 global advertisers.
www.dentsu.com

We are champions for meaningful progress and we strive to be a force for good—for our people, for our clients, for the industry and for our society. We keep our people at the center, creating space for growth, understanding and learning so they can thrive. We embed diversity, in our mindset, in our solutions and in our teams to empower an inclusive, equitable and culturally fluent environment. Building this culture within our teams makes us better collaborators with each other and with our clients, driving better outcomes for all.

Dentsu (the "Company") is committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity and will not discriminate against an applicant or employee of the Company, on the basis of age, sex, sexual orientation, race, color, creed, religion, ethnicity, national origin, alienage or citizenship, disability, marital status, veteran or military status, genetic information, or any other legally-recognized protected basis under federal, state or local laws, regulations or ordinances. Applicants with disabilities may be entitled to reasonable accommodation under the terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act and/or certain state or local laws. A reasonable accommodation is a change in the way things are normally done that will ensure an equal employment opportunity without imposing an undue hardship on the Company. Please contact dentsurecruiting@dentsu.com if you need assistance completing any forms or to otherwise participate in the application process or to request or discuss an accommodation in connection with a job at the Company to which you are applying.