Creative Lead (Shopify Plus & Digital Experience)

We are looking for a Creative Lead to join our Operations department, working cross-functionally across all delivery pods. This is a senior position responsible for setting and upholding the standard for visual design, user experience and creative delivery across our Shopify practice. You will combine exceptional hands-on design craft with team leadership, commercial awareness and a deep understanding of how successful Shopify experiences are designed, built and maintained.

You will lead the design discipline across all delivery pods, working alongside Project Managers, Development Leads, Frontend Developers, Solutions Consultants and Product Owners. Your remit will span discovery, research, creative direction, prototyping, development handoff, production design assurance and ongoing optimisation.

You will create distinctive brand experiences within the capabilities of Shopify themes, including Dawn, Horizon, premium themes and our proprietary theme. You will own design architecture and partner with Development Leads on technical implementation, ensuring designs map accurately to theme capabilities and agreed component libraries. 

You will establish design systems that are actively used in delivery, implement effective AI-assisted workflows, and help win standalone UX/UI and design engagements. Success means improving design quality, creativity, consistency and speed while protecting client outcomes and project profitability.

Leadership Remit

This is a leadership role with hands-on delivery responsibilities on selected strategic or complex projects. You will line manage and develop the design team, set standards across pods and support Sales and Solutions with design opportunities. Routine pod delivery will be led by assigned designers, with your oversight and support. Priorities and capacity across hands-on delivery, management, sales support and practice development will be agreed with the Delivery Director and reviewed regularly.

Key Responsibilities & Duties

1. Creative Direction, Design Craft & Quality

• Own the agency's visual design standard, ensuring work demonstrates strong art direction, typography, composition, imagery, interaction design and brand expression.
• Translate client positioning and customer needs into distinctive, commercially effective experiences, using reusable theme capabilities creatively.
• Lead hands-on design for selected enterprise or strategically important projects, setting a clear example of the expected quality.
• Establish regular design critiques and quality reviews, providing specific, constructive feedback and approving key outputs before client presentation.
• Balance visual ambition with accessibility, usability, performance, technical feasibility and the agreed budget.

2. Discovery, Research & Client Communication

• Establish standardised discovery playbooks, creative briefs, workshop templates and presentation frameworks for the design team.
• Define customer journeys, user needs, business objectives, content requirements and measurable success criteria with clients and the wider project team.
• Lead proportionate customer research, usability testing and analysis of behavioural data, using findings to inform and validate designs before development.
• Review discovery and research outputs for completeness, technical accuracy and alignment with commercial objectives.
• Train and coach designers to facilitate workshops, explain design decisions, manage feedback and present confidently to senior stakeholders.
• Support complex enterprise workshops, challenging client discussions and escalations where additional creative leadership is required.

3. Shopify Theme-Based Design & Merchant Usability

• Maintain a practical understanding of Dawn, Horizon, premium themes and our proprietary theme, including their sections, blocks, templates, settings and responsive behaviour.
• Create and maintain Figma libraries that map accurately to the selected theme's capabilities and implementation patterns.
• Clearly identify native theme capabilities, configurable adaptations and bespoke development within proposed designs, agreeing scope and implications with Solutions and Development Leads.
• Design for mobile and desktop customer journeys, with particular attention to mobile navigation, product discovery, product selection and purchase flows.
• Design for merchants maintaining the website, ensuring sections and templates are practical to configure, populate and reuse.
• Document content and imagery requirements, configuration options and relevant limitations so clients and delivery teams understand how designs will work in practice.

4. Design Systems & Integration with Development

• Build, implement and maintain scalable Figma design systems using shared tokens, variables, auto-layout, component properties and documented patterns.
• Establish agreed mappings between design components and Shopify theme sections, blocks, settings and templates, including components specific to our agency starter theme.
• Work with developers to align design and code libraries through shared naming, documentation, versioning and change processes.
• Specify responsive behaviour, interaction states, validation, loading, empty and error states, alongside accessibility and content guidance.
• Integrate design systems into estimation, backlog refinement, development handoff, implementation and quality assurance.
• Define ownership and approval processes for new components, changes and exceptions, keeping libraries accurate as production implementations evolve.
• Support Theme App Extensions, checkout extensibility and headless storefront design where required by the agreed project scope, working with the relevant technical specialists.

AI-Assisted Design & Rapid Prototyping

• Implement and maintain AI-assisted workflows that improve design quality, consistency, speed or delivery cost, with clear evidence of their impact.
• Evaluate and select appropriate tools for ideation, prototyping, asset production and repetitive tasks, based on delivery needs and demonstrated value.
• Establish reusable briefs, prompts, reference materials and review criteria grounded in client brand guidelines, design systems and Shopify theme capabilities.
• Use interactive prototypes to test customer journeys and clarify requirements, identifying where generated outputs require adaptation before theme implementation.
• Maintain human review of design decisions and generated outputs, checking usability, accessibility, technical feasibility and brand accuracy.
• Establish appropriate practices for client confidentiality, approved data use, asset provenance and usage rights.
• Train the team, document effective workflows and measure adoption and results. Assess time savings alongside output quality, rework and tool costs.

6. Pod Delivery & Commercial Ownership

• Partner with PMs, Solutions Consultants and Development Leads to scope and estimate design work, identify dependencies and agree deliverables and acceptance criteria.
• Contribute to capacity planning, backlog refinement and relevant delivery ceremonies, ensuring designers have realistic priorities and sufficient time for quality work.
• Own design estimates and resource planning with PMs, monitoring budget adherence and addressing delivery risks early.
• Manage design feedback, approval milestones and change control, making the impact of additional requirements clear.
• Balance design quality with agreed timelines and budgets, supporting project profitability and reducing avoidable rework.
• Maintain clear decisions, assumptions and handoff documentation so design work can move efficiently between teams.

7. Standalone Design Opportunities & Sales Support

• Help position and win standalone UX/UI, discovery and design engagements, including work commissioned independently of development or platform migration.
• Work with Sales and Solutions to qualify opportunities, understand client needs and define a credible design approach and scope.
• Lead or support proposals, pitches and portfolio presentations, communicating the commercial value of design and the agency's differentiation.
• Define deliverables and handoff arrangements for design-only engagements, including projects implemented by a client's internal team or another development partner.
• Develop case studies that demonstrate the quality of delivered work, the team's contribution and evidenced outcomes.

8. Accessibility, Production Assurance & Optimisation

• Embed accessibility requirements in research, design systems, specifications and reviews, working towards the WCAG AA standard agreed for each project.
• Collaborate with developers to balance visual design with page performance and the practical constraints of production implementation.
• Review implemented websites against approved designs across devices, including interactions, content, accessibility and edge cases.
• Resolve design discrepancies with developers before launch and ensure agreed design acceptance criteria are met.
• Use post-launch feedback, usability findings and analytics to identify improvements and inform future work.
• Agree optimisation hypotheses and evaluate outcomes with the wider team, recognising that conversion performance is influenced by factors beyond design alone.

9. Line Management, Mentorship & Practice Development

• Conduct regular one-to-ones, coaching, design critiques and presentation practice to develop each designer's craft and client-facing skills.
• Set clear competency expectations and progression paths covering design quality, research, Shopify knowledge, commercial awareness and delivery.
• Support recruitment and onboarding, assessing candidates against practical evidence and the agency's standards.
• Maintain creative briefs, QA checklists, file organisation and documentation standards across pods.
• Monitor team capacity and capability, escalating resourcing or skills gaps and proposing practical improvements.

Requirements

• Enterprise Shopify portfolio: A proven portfolio of live enterprise level Shopify and Shopify Plus websites demonstrating exceptional visual design, strong mobile UX and commercially effective customer journeys. Candidates must explain their personal contribution, delivery constraints and evidenced outcomes. Work must extend beyond concepts and prototypes to implemented websites.

• Shopify theme-based delivery: A proven track record of designing against Shopify base theme templates, including Dawn, Horizon and premium themes. This must include component libraries that match theme sections, blocks, templates, settings and responsive behaviours, with clear distinctions between native capabilities, configuration and bespoke development.
• Design systems integrated with development: A proven track record of implementing high quality, scalable design systems actively used by designers and developers. Evidence must cover tokens, reusable components, documented patterns, versioning, governance, adoption and integration into planning, implementation and QA.
• Standalone design wins: A proven track record of winning standalone UX/UI and design projects, including engagements independent of development or migration. Candidates must explain their contribution to qualification, proposals, pitching, commercial positioning, scope and successful delivery.
• Successful AI implementation: A proven track record of implementing AI assistance within professional design processes, with evidence of team adoption and measurable improvements in speed, quality, consistency or cost. Candidates must explain the workflows, evaluation methods, human review and safeguards introduced.
• Creative leadership: Extensive eCommerce design experience within an agency or comparable delivery environment, combining hands-on creative direction with line management, mentoring and quality ownership.
• Research and validation: Practical experience using customer research, usability testing and behavioural evidence to inform and validate design decisions.
• Enterprise stakeholder management: Experience facilitating discovery, presenting to senior stakeholders, managing competing requirements and coaching designers in client communication.
• Commercial delivery: Experience estimating and scoping design engagements, managing feedback and change, and delivering within agreed budgets and timelines.
• Cross-functional working: Experience collaborating with PMs, Solutions Consultants and developers throughout implementation, including production design assurance and post-launch improvement.

Desirable Experience

• Multi-brand and international Shopify experiences, including localisation and differing content requirements.
• Shopify checkout extensibility, Theme App Extensions or headless storefront projects.
• Experimentation and conversion optimisation programmes with measurable outcomes.
• Designing integrated experiences involving search, subscriptions, loyalty, personalisation or other third-party services.

Technical & Tooling Competencies

• Advanced Figma skills, including auto-layout, variables, component sets, component properties, prototyping and library management.
• Strong knowledge of Shopify theme architecture, section and block models, theme configuration, checkout design constraints and mobile eCommerce patterns.
• Working understanding of HTML, CSS, JSON and Liquid, sufficient to discuss feasibility, performance implications and implementation requirements with developers.
• Practical knowledge of accessibility, responsive behaviour and how design decisions affect Core Web Vitals.
• Experience with professional asset creation and editing tools appropriate to the workflow, such as Adobe Creative Suite.
• Demonstrable expertise with AI-assisted design and prototyping tools, such as Lovable, v0 or equivalent platforms; successful application matters more than familiarity with a particular vendor.
• Ability to interpret analytics, session recordings and usability findings using tools such as GA4, Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar or equivalents.
• Familiarity with iterative delivery, backlog management and documented design-to-development handoffs.

Key Performance Indicators

Specific targets will be agreed with the Delivery Director using delivery baselines and reviewed regularly.

• Creative and production quality: Quality review results and acceptance of implemented experiences against agreed design criteria.
• Client satisfaction: Feedback on creative quality, strategic guidance, communication and delivered outcomes.
• Delivery and budget adherence: Design milestones achieved within agreed scope, timelines and budgets, with timely change control.
• Design-to-development rework: Reduction in avoidable revisions caused by incomplete specifications, technical misalignment or inconsistent components.
• Design system adoption and reuse: Appropriate use of maintained components across eligible projects and alignment between Figma libraries and production implementations.
• Team capability: Improvement in design craft, Shopify knowledge and autonomous discovery and presentation delivery.
• Standalone design performance: Contribution to qualified opportunity wins, commercially sound scoping and successful delivery, assessed jointly with Sales.
• AI workflow impact: Validated improvements in cycle time, quality or cost, considered alongside adoption, rework and tooling expenditure.
• Research and optimisation outcomes: Evidence that customer findings inform decisions and that agreed hypotheses are evaluated. Conversion and related commercial outcomes will be assessed jointly with the wider team.

Benefits

• Unlimited paid holidays - yes, that's not a typo!
• Hybrid working (remote working is considered for this role)
• Medicash Cash Plan – covering everything from medical support, massages, optical, dental, a discounts platform, and extras like SkinVision and digital physiotherapy. Cash back up to £995 per year, completely paid for by us!
• Employee Assistance Programme – access to Vivup for mental health support, financial and legal guidance, and wellbeing resources
• Great working environments; our Stockton on Tees and Manchester workspaces are also dog-friendly
• A high-performance MacBook
• Free breakfast, fruit, hot and cold drinks and protein shakes
• Pension scheme to help you save for the future
• Cycle to work scheme
• EV Car scheme - your choice of The Electric Car Scheme or Octopus
• Discounts across our brands
• Training & development

Our Values

We champion our clients
We believe in every retailer's potential to succeed online and celebrate each milestone of their journey with them.

We are one team
We believe in the power of collaboration - within our teams and with our clients. Together, there’s nothing we can’t achieve.

We create change
The future of eCommerce is always evolving. Where others see uncertainty, we see an opportunity to lead.

We care about what matters
We are committed to making the world a little brighter and doing what’s best for our people, our community, and our planet.

So if you think you’ve got what it takes to join one of the UK’s leading eCommerce agencies, we’d love to hear from you.

A little formality… by applying, you implicitly consent to us processing your personal data for review for this vacancy only.

Talent Hunter Referral Bounty - £500

Help us find the right talent to join our team, and get a handsome reward in return. It couldn’t be easier - if you know someone that could be an ideal candidate, either refer them directly to us or simply ask them to include your details as the referer when they apply. If they land the job with us as a direct result of your referral, you get the bounty!

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Visualsoft is an equal opportunities employer committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspective.

We believe passionately that a diverse workforce is central to our success so we welcome applications from all sections of the community.