Creative Director| Director, Design (Hybrid)

About Rewards Network®

Rewards Network is a fast-paced, restaurant-focused fintech company that connects restaurants with the world’s most powerful consumer loyalty programs to reward diners through card-linked offers. We are the leading capital provider for restaurants, and our partners—companies like United, Delta, Bilt, Fetch, and Rakuten—are the leaders in their industries. With a strong foundation built over four decades, Rewards Network has delivered enduring value to more than 100,000 restaurants.

Our Culture  

At Rewards Network, you'll be part of a driven and diverse team that excels in collaboration, issue resolution, and taking ownership of both personal growth and the company's success. We take pride in partnering with the world's most powerful loyalty programs to drive full-price paying customers to local restaurants through marketing services and flexible funding options. Our engaging and rewarding environment is designed to help you gain your full potential. 

Job Overview

The In-House Creative Director is the guardian of the visual representation of our brand. You will lead an internal team of designers, and external content teams to build differentiated, consistent, sophisticated, recognizable, and engaging brand experiences across every instance where Rewards Network is present: marketing, product, service, digital and physical spaces. 

The scope extends well beyond our own brand. Rewards Network powers nearly 20 white label, well established loyalty programs, giving you the opportunity to represent and bring to life some of the most recognized brands globally while ensuring each experience is distinctive, engaging, and true to the partner’s brand.

By working cross-functionally across every team, you ensure that brand identity and integrity shines consistently for our restaurant customers, our loyalty partners, our dining members, our investors, and broadly across our industry.  By deeply understanding the competitive landscape, you ensure that our brand is recognized amongst our competitors by differentiated, sophisticated design that communicates thought leadership and success.  

This is a hybrid position and requires in-office presence Tuesday through Thursday each week in Chicago.

What you’ll bring to the table: (Responsibilities)  

• Brand Stewardship: Evolve and protect the overarching visual identity, tone of voice, and design standards across all corporate assets and deliverables. 
• Experiential & Spatial Direction: Partner with events and field teams to translate brand pillars into physical touchpoints.
• Campaign Execution: Support multi-channel marketing campaigns and offer strategies from concept to execution across Rewards Network brand and all personalized partner brands.
• Product & Brand Storytelling: Create compelling visuals for different restaurant offer types across many different customer segments and partners.
• Translate new product and technical features, AI innovations, and complex ecosystem value propositions into clear, emotionally resonant, and accessible creative narratives.
• Design System & Brand Governance: Scale, evolve, and maintain comprehensive design systems and brand guidelines that operate effectively across every touchpoint and communication vehicle across all functions (marketing, product, sales, service).
• Interactive & Digital Craft Leadership: Direct the creation of cutting-edge digital experiences, including immersive web animations and videos, sales enablement materials, product explanations / demonstrations / tutorials, customer testimonials, and leadership thought pieces.
• Creative Operations & Scaling: Build and optimize agile creative workflows, determine tooling/technology needs (such as Figma, Adobe CC, and emerging AI-assisted pipelines), and efficiently allocate internal team resources or external agency partners.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, Partnerships, Engineering, Field and Service teams to co-create and support go-to-market (GTM) strategies.
• Content Production: Oversee production, use, and implementation of high-volume, photography, videography, and promotional campaigns for all channels.
• Team Cultivation & Mentorship: Lead and inspire an internal team of designers and copywriters, fostering a high-performance culture of experimentation and craft.
• Company Values: Exude Rewards Network’s company values: be open, honest and direct; put customers at the center of everything we do, set a high bar and achieve it, think and act like an owner and always with integrity, presume trust, celebrate others, and have fun.  

Do you have the right mix of ingredients: (Requirements)

•  Ability to build and govern brand identity systems to ensure a more cohesive and thoughtful brand.
• Balancing Rewards Network innovation with partner brand standards. Produces distinctive co-branded creative while staying compliant with an airline or hotel partner's brand book and approvals.

• Multi-channel experience in email, paid social, display, landing pages, app UI, print and event. Performance driven creative that drives leads, sales, spend in marketplace.
• Team leadership and development. critique that raises work without crushing it, career pathing, workload tri-age across 2 to 6 designers.
• Expert in Figma, Adobe CC, project management software, presentation tools like PowerPoint, AI tools.
• Creative operations. Intake, briefing, routing, review cycles, version control, asset classification.
• Stakeholder navigation and presentation with the ability to defend work and thought process to leadership, partner teams, and executives in the business.
• Vendor and freelance management with the ability to source, scope, brief, budget, and QC for photographers, videographers, animators, and overflow capacity.

Education, Certifications and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in art, design, marketing, business, or related field.
• 6+ years of experience in creative, marketing, or design with at least 2 years of leadership experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading a portfolio of multiple concurrent, related programs from inception to launch.
• Experience working with creative tools, systems and technologies.
• Experience presenting program-level status to executives and senior-leaders.

What you’ll love about us: 

Comprehensive benefits package, which includes:

• This is a full-time, exempt position and the base compensation for this opening in Chicago is expected to be $140,000-$160,000 annualized, depending on level, candidate experience, skills, and other factors. This position will be eligible for an annual bonus program with a 15% bonus target for total at target of $161,000-$195,500.
• Competitive Paid Time Off and company holidays
• Generous dining reimbursement when you dine with our restaurant clients 
• 401(k) plan with a company match
• Two medical plan options- Standard PPO or High Deductible Health Plan (HSA with company match for HDHP participants)
• Partnership with Rx n Go, offering certain prescriptions for free
• Two dental plan options and a vision plan
• Flexible Spending Accounts and a pre-tax commuter benefit program
• Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity Insurance Plans
• Short Term and Long Term disability 
• Company-paid life insurance and AD&D insurance, supplemental employee, spouse, and child life insurance 
• Employee Life Assistance Program
• Hybrid working space in our state of the art office downtown located by the Metra and Ogilvie train stations
• Catered lunches provided on Tuesday's in our Chicago office