Creative Director

About the role

ABOUT US Circle is building the world’s leading AI-powered, all-in-one platform for digital businesses. We make it possible for creators, coaches, educators, and businesses to bring together their audience with engaging discussions, live streams, events, chat, courses, and payments — all in one place, all under their own brand. We’re proud to be a fully remote company of around 270 (and growing!) team members from 30+ countries around the world. We seek exceptional individuals around the world, set them up to do the best work of their lives, and in turn, create a meaningful impact in their own lives. We don't track hours, but we do manage for high expectations very closely. We collaborate across time zones, are highly async, and like to document a lot. Twice a year, we bring the whole company together in beautiful places around the world for our company offsites. So far, we’ve hosted offsites in Turkey, Portugal, Mexico, Thailand, Colombia, Italy, Ireland, and more, with still more to come! Check out our Careers https://careers.circle.so/ page for more about working at Circle. ABOUT THE ROLE We’re excited to bring on Circle’s first Creative Director. This is a unique opportunity to shape how Circle shows up in the world, and define the story of a generational company building the future of digital businesses. We’re looking for an exceptional creative storyteller who can help us develop strong, consistent narratives across everything Circle puts into the world: product launches, campaigns, ads, landing pages, announcements, partnerships, events, and more. You obsess over the power of a great narrative. You believe every word, visual, and detail matters. You have an exceptionally high creative bar, thrive in highly collaborative environments, and know how to influence people through the quality of the work itself. As Circle’s first Creative Director, you’ll first and foremost act as a creative extension of the founders. You will turn their ideas, product strategy, and company vision into narratives that are clear, memorable, and unmistakably Circle across all our assets. On a day-to-day basis, you’ll work closely with Circle’s founders and across our in-house design studio, product marketing, paid media, video, and events teams to elevate our storytelling and creative execution across every major moment. Your goal is to help make Circle one of the most creatively distinct and definitive companies in the category of digital businesses. WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING - Shape Circle’s narrative. Work closely with Circle’s founders to synthesize, sharpen, and evolve the story behind our long-term vision, and translate it into clear, compelling narratives that can travel across everything we do. - Own the creative direction of our biggest launches and campaigns. Find the angle, develop the brief, shape the story, and obsess over how we make each moment stand out. You’ll partner closely with Product Marketing across launches, announcements, demos, and enablement to ensure everything feels cohesive, intentional, and unmistakably Circle. Doing this well requires developing a deep understanding of our product, customers, and market. - Be a deeply embedded creative marketing partner to our design studio. You’ll work especially closely with our Design Studio, which is led by one of Circle’s co-founders and won’t report to you. Success here involves shared taste, mutual trust, healthy creative tension, and the ability to move quickly together. You’ll occasionally lead external agencies as well — and when the moment calls for it, write the high-stakes copy yourself: the headline, manifesto, launch script, or line someone delivers on stage. - Raise the bar on our advertising and creative campaigns. Develop the concepts and narratives behind Circle’s ad creative, partnering up our Paid Acquisition team to turn them into high-performing campaigns. They’ll bring the channel and media-buying expertise; while you can make sure the creative is worth paying to distribute. - Direct how our stories come to life across video and events. Get hands-on with scripts, structure, pacing, and narrative for launch films, social, ads, virtual summits, and other major moments. You won’t be editing videos or producing events yourself, but you’ll understand the craft well enough to have strong opinions about what works in each medium, and collaborate deeply with the specialists who bring it to life. - Influence the narrative behind brand experiences people remember across our webinars, virtual summits, conferences, and live events to align with company brand vision. This includes everything from the theme and programming to the booth, talks, slides, copy, and small details nobody else would think to obsess over. - Turn partnerships into stories. Work with our Partnerships team to make more of our collaborations with creators and customers into stories we can distribute across our channels. You can help develop the concept, framing, name, narrative, and creative execution behind our biggest partnerships, and helping our partners tell those stories powerfully themselves. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - A body of work you’re genuinely proud of. We care far more about what you’ve made than the titles you’ve held or the number of years you’ve been doing it. You should be able to walk us through your best work piece by piece: the problem, the idea, the choices you made, what you personally contributed, and ultimately, whether it worked. - Exceptional creative taste and judgment. You know great work when you see it, can articulate why it’s great, and have the conviction to push work until it gets there. Just as importantly, you know when an idea is trying too hard, when something is off-brand, and when your own fingerprints are making the work worse rather than better. - You’re an exceptional storyteller and writer. You can take something complicated and find the simple, compelling story inside it. You care deeply about language and will happily obsess over a headline, a launch narrative, or a single line of copy until it feels inevitable. - A strong point of view, and the ability to make it better through collaboration. We don’t want someone who waits for a brief and executes it. We want someone who can tell us what the brief should be, challenge the premise when necessary, elevate ideas coming from the team and our founders, and make a compelling case for a different direction. - Real fluency in video as a creative medium. You don’t need to shoot, edit, animate, or produce. But you should deeply understand what makes video work, from the script and opening seconds to structure, pacing, emotion, and payoff. You should also understand why a great launch film, social video, customer story, and paid ad require very different creative choices. - Experience making creative that has to perform. You’ve developed ads and campaigns where the work was ultimately accountable to results. You’ve seen the numbers, learned from them, iterated because of them, and know how to partner with paid acquisition teams without allowing performance marketing to turn into boring marketing. - An instinct for getting attention without going off script. You understand how to make a brand noticeable, surprising, and culturally relevant without chasing attention for its own sake. Ideally, you can show us a creative risk you fought for that worked, and another you talked the room out of because it wasn’t right for the brand. - The ability to lead through influence, not hierarchy. There’s no large creative organization reporting to you. Much of your impact will come from getting exceptional work out of designers, marketers, writers, video producers, agencies, and founders who don’t report to you. You know how to raise the creative bar without becoming a bottleneck. - A great eye for design and deep respect for the craft. You don’t need to be a designer, but you should be able to work shoulder-to-shoulder with exceptional ones. Our Design Studio is led by a co-founder and operates with a very high bar; you’ll need the visual taste, vocabulary, and collaborative instincts to be a trusted creative partner to that team. - Experience working closely with founders. You’re comfortable working with founders who care deeply about the product, brand, and details. You will need to extract the vision, challenge it when needed, and turn it into something better than either of you would have arrived at independently. - An obsession with understanding what how to tell the world about we do and why it matters. The best creative work here will come from understanding Circle at a deep level: our product, customers, competitors, category, and where the market is going. You should genuinely enjoy developing that level of context rather than treating it as somebody else’s job. - Exceptional communication skills. Circle is global, remote, and highly asynchronous. You’ll need outstanding written and verbal English (CEFR C2 or equivalent), and the ability to make your thinking clear enough that great work can move forward even when everyone isn’t in the same room. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Circle offers U.S.-benchmarked compensation globally, equity in the company with ongoing refresh grants, and 35 days of paid time off each year. We’re a remote-only team that comes together twice a year for company retreats in incredible destinations around the world. Alongside incredible flexibility and autonomy, we offer a benefits package that supports health, wellbeing, and professional growth. Learn more in our Candidate Hub. https://circleco.notion.site/circle-candidate-hub LEARN MORE - Candidate Safety & Interview Process Notice https://app.notion.com/p/circleco/Circle-Candidate-Hub-374b655313b7803d9580fb7da4f51acf?source=copy_link#374b655313b780e5b681c4d56b962790 - Diversity, Equity & Inclusion https://app.notion.com/p/circleco/Circle-Candidate-Hub-374b655313b7803d9580fb7da4f51acf?source=copy_link#374b655313b7807a8e3ff5c25a1d93ba - How We Use Candidate Data https://app.notion.com/p/circleco/Circle-Candidate-Hub-374b655313b7803d9580fb7da4f51acf?source=copy_link#374b655313b780e49e98f390eec6bb51 - Equal Employment Opportunity https://app.notion.com/p/circleco/Circle-Candidate-Hub-374b655313b7803d9580fb7da4f51acf?source=copy_link#374b655313b7807a967dea67e68f31f0 - Visit our Candidate Hub https://circleco.notion.site/circle-candidate-hub to learn more about working at Circle, our benefits, and our hiring process.