Job Description

Location:

Condé Nast thrives on collaboration and our teams come together in the office four days a week (Monday - Thursday).

We value diversity of background views and cultures. We celebrate people for their personal qualities skills and contributions recognising the power our brands have to influence and shape culture.

The Opportunity

This is a rare opportunity to define the foundational design layer of some of the worlds most storied media brands - and to do it at a moment when what platform design means is genuinely changing.

The Publishing Platform group sits at the heart of how Condé Nasts brands are built expressed and experienced at scale. It spans our design system component library and templates editorial tooling and CMS. The work here enables every brand from The New Yorker to Vogue to Wired to move with greater creative confidence and coherence and to deliver experiences that are faster more beautiful and more meaningful for the users they serve. Get it right and the effect is felt across everything.

Were looking for a Senior Design Director who is both a rigorous systems thinker and a deeply craft-led leader: someone who understands that great platform design isnt just about efficiency but about enabling expression. This is a player-coach role. Youll lead a team of senior ICs and some emerging leads but youll be in the work alongside them when it matters setting the standard through doing as much as directing.

This is also a role for someone who is energised by change not unsettled by it. The team the platform and our ways of working are all evolving - and this person will help shape what they evolve into.

What youll be doing

• Defining the Design vision for the Publishing Platform. In collaboration with Product and Engineering youll set the direction for the group: a portfolio that spans design systems editorial tools newsletters puzzles and games. Youll ensure that vision is clear shared and actionable for your team and your cross-functional partners. Youll connect the day-to-day work to a longer-term picture of what this platform should become and youll bring people along with you.

• Owning the line between scale and expression. Youll be the principal decision-maker on one of the most consequential design tensions in the business: what gets unified and what stays bespoke. Youll develop principled frameworks for when the system should hold the line and when a brands unique voice warrants something purpose-built and youll be a credible evidence-based advocate for both sides of that argument. Expression here means the full user experience: typography that makes long-form reading a pleasure interactions that feel effortless across reading watching and play ad experiences that dont undermine editorial trust and accessibility that ensures great content reaches everyone.

• Leading through craft not just process. This is a player-coach role: Youll be in the work when it matters in reviews in critiques and occasionally in the details because thats how you set the standard and build the capability of those around you. Youll know when to get close and when to step back and youll use both to grow your team. Youll lead the forums rituals and culture that make craft excellence the norm not the exception.

• Bringing technical depth and forward-looking thinking. Youll bring genuine technical fluency across front-end technologies design systems and component architecture. Youll understand the implications of design decisions at the platform level and care deeply about what those decisions mean for the readers actual experience: Core Web Vitals load times ad rendering and the p95 user who isnt on a fast connection with a new device. Youll partner closely with your Product and Engineering counterparts to ensure design and technology strategy are tightly aligned not just coordinated.

• Leading with AI actively not theoretically. Youll have a considered evolving point of view on what AI means for platform design: for the system itself for your teams workflow and for the relationship between design and engineering. Youll use AI tools as a working part of your own practice for prototyping for accelerating exploration for closing the gap between concept and execution and youll bring your team along with you. You wont wait for best practices to be established; youll help establish them.

• Partnering and influencing cross-functionally. Youll build trusted productive relationships with Product Engineering Editorial and Revenue leadership. Youll be comfortable navigating a large complex organisation getting things done through clarity and influence rather than authority. Youll represent design in high-stakes strategic conversations connecting the work to OKRs advocating for designs needs and being as credible in a conversation about component APIs as in one about brand creative direction.

• Embed an insights-driven outcomes-oriented approach. Youll champion a culture of measurement and learning. Youll ensure design decisions are grounded in evidence working closely with research and analytics partners to build a qualitative and quantitative picture of whats working and what isnt. Youll connect the groups work to measurable outcomes track impact post-launch and bring a fluency in the commercial dimensions of the platform subscriptions advertising and commerce that allows you to inform Products thinking credibly and constructively.

• Building and developing your team. Youll attract develop and retain strong design talent. Youll think carefully about how to organise the team as the portfolio evolves: when to centralise when to embed how to balance specialism and breadth. Youll invest deeply in individual development foster psychological safety and creative ambition and build a cohesive team that performs well even in periods of change.

Youll thrive here if

• Youre energised by building in complexity youve led design through significant change before and know how to create momentum and confidence in a team while the ground is shifting

• Youre a genuine player-coach: you lead through others but youre not above getting into the details and your team knows the difference between your involvement being a signal of support and a signal of concern

• You have deep craft instincts for typography systems interaction and the reading experience and you hold the line on quality even under pressure

• You think across the system and the story simultaneously: you understand that a great design system exists to enable brand expression not constrain it

• You have a real working relationship with AI tools not as a talking point but as part of how you actually design and lead

• Youre fluent in multi-brand complexity: youve worked across genuinely different editorial cultures within a shared platform and you have principled views on governance and flexibility

• You operate through influence and clarity not authority youre as comfortable in a conversation with a CTO as with a junior designer and you build trust quickly across both

• Youre resilient and low-ego you can navigate ambiguity absorb pressure and keep your team steady without pretending everything is fine

What success looks like

In your first six months youll have built the trust and understanding needed to form a clear well-grounded point of view on how the foundations of our platform need to evolve in order to deliver user experiences deserving of our world-class brands and youll have started acting on it with early measurable improvements to show.

By the end of your first year that point of view will be in motion. The quality bar of our user experiences will be visibly higher the team will be working in new ways and the organisation will be aligned around a shared vision for what this platform is becoming.

Essential skills and experience

Craft and technical foundation

• Substantial experience leading platform-level systems-oriented design including design systems component libraries or shared publishing tooling with a track record of shipping at scale across multiple brands or product lines

• Deep technical fluency: front-end architecture design tokens component design theming systems accessibility and performance trade-offs at a level that earns genuine credibility with engineering partners

• A hands-on evolving relationship with AI tooling someone who has already changed how they work because of it and is actively curious about what changes next

• A sophisticated understanding of typography narrative structure visual storytelling and the particular design challenges of publishing products

Leadership and people

• Demonstrated ability to lead as a player-coach: setting standards through doing raising the craft of those around you and building team capability through proximity to the work

• Experience leading design teams through significant change or organisational flux building confidence and momentum while the environment is shifting

• Proven ability to attract develop and grow senior design talent including emerging people managers across a global and distributed organisation

• Comfort thinking about org design: how to structure a team where to specialise how to evolve the team shape as the portfolio grows

Strategic and cross-functional

• A principled clear-eyed approach to the tension between platform unification and brand expression with experience making and defending these calls in complex multi-brand environments

• Fluency in the commercial dimensions of a publishing platform subscriptions advertising loyalty sufficient to inform and partner credibly with Product leadership on strategic decisions

• Excellent communication facilitation and storytelling skills able to influence senior stakeholders and technical partners alike and build alignment across competing priorities

• Experience leveraging OKR frameworks to connect design direction to measurable business outcomes

It would be a bonus to have:

• Experience working in media publishing or content-led consumer products

• Experience working in large global organisations with distributed teams across multiple time zones

About Condé Nast Technology

Condé Nast Technology builds the products systems and experiences that power our brands from Vogue and The New Yorker to GQ Wired and Vanity Fair. Our mission is to enable creativity and business growth through next-generation publishing loyalty and commerce platforms.

Were a global team of designers engineers product managers and researchers working across London New York and twelve other markets. We believe that a well-formed design culture is essential.

Does this sound like you

Please submit your CV and cover letter/portfolio which highlights why youd love to take on this role and why youre a great match for what were looking for.

We value the time and effort behind every application. All submissions are reviewed by a member of our talent team - we dont use AI-assisted technology to review applications.

What benefits do we offer

• 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays) and extra days of annual leave if you move house or want to volunteer.

• Youll have access to a competitive pension scheme Bupa Private Healthcare Season ticket loans and eye tests.

• We offer a range of tools to support your wellbeing including core hours 10 remote days (from home or a country with a Condé Nast office location) access to our Employee Assistance Programme corporate gym membership and cycle to work scheme.

• Were a dog-friendly office plus youll enjoy discounts and magazine subscriptions keeping you up to date with all things Condé Nast.

• We encourage personal and professional growth through the Condé Nast Learning Hub where youll find an extensive portfolio of learning courses and training available in local languages.

• Our Employee Resource Groups provide a platform for employees to identify shared objectives exchange ideas and work on community priorities for our global workforce.

What happens next

If you are interested in this opportunity please apply below and we will review your application as soon as possible. You can update your resume or upload a cover letter at any time by accessing your candidate profile.

Condé Nast is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race color religion sex sexual orientation gender identity national origin disability veteran status age familial status and other legally protected characteristics.