Overview

Toptal is a network of the world’s top 3% of software engineering, design, and finance talent – available on demand to help companies accelerate, adapt, and scale. With $100+ million in annual revenue and triple-digit growth, Toptal is the largest fully distributed workforce in the world.

We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun [see this video from The Huffington Post]. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.

If you’re not in the job market, you’re exactly the type of person we’re looking for.

Position Description

At Toptal, creating beautiful, functional design that contributes powerfully to our business, our products, our marketing and our brand is critical to us. We don’t cut corners or make compromises, and as we rapidly grow, we need to ensure that our design teams are able to do great design at scale without loss in quality.

As the Head of Brand Design, you will lead all Brand, Marketing and Web Design teams at Toptal and will be in charge of setting the design workflow and team structure that will enable streamlined collaboration between our designers and our product, marketing, and engineering teams at scale. Ultimately, you will be the chief brand steward across the business, responsible for the visual identity across every point of touch, from advertising and events, to sales, to our worldwide community of experts, to our website, etc. While you and your teams will be primarily focused on Brand and Marketing design, you will need to collaborate closely with the Head of Product Design and other stakeholders to ensure consistent branding across the business. To excel in this role, you must have an excellent understanding of how to scale marketing design functions.

This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere.

Requirements

  • Lead Toptal’s entire marketing design function, collaborating with stakeholders around the company to understand the needs of their teams and establishing a team structure and end-to-end workflow designed to best serve those needs.
  • Evolve Toptal’s brand and visual identity to best reflect the current and future goals of the business. Constantly be pushing the boundaries of creativity and visual expression.
  • Empower and mentor designers on your team, fostering a collaborative, productive, and positive environment within a growing team.
  • Maintain and further build design team workflows that ensure that all designs delivered are in line with our brand guidelines and extremely high quality standards.
  • Work with your team to optimize output and ensure that the large volume of deliverables requested of the design team on a daily basis are completed on time.
  • Gauge fluctuations in the needs of relevant teams at Toptal and hire more designers for your team accordingly.
  • Lead your team in expanding mastery of the business goals of each design request and pushing back on stakeholders with innovative creative proposals.
  • Empower your team members to proactively lead iteration cycles with stakeholders and push designs forward according to the team’s vision and understanding of the business goals of each request.
  • Be highly communicative and responsive both within your team and to stakeholders across the company while managing a large volume of ongoing projects.
  • Take smart risks and champion new ideas.
  • Hire, onboard, train, and mentor new team members.
  • Lead team meetings and strategy sessions.
  • Communicate constantly with teams via Skype and Slack.

Responsibilities

  • You must be extremely pragmatic and have an exceptional ability to empower and manage teams of designers.
  • 8+ years of experience as a brand and marketing designer & creative director with proven experience leading design efforts on successful brands and projects.
  • Experience leading 5+ person design teams collaborating with multiple mission-critical areas of a company and managing designers with specialized responsibilities.
  • You must have high integrity and be able to forcefully advocate for your ideas, push back, embrace feedback and proactively communicate your vision to the organization.
  • Proven experience building and maintaining style guides and streamlined workflows with QA feedback systems.
  • Extensive mastery of Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, and InVision, with a strong understanding of when design teams should be using each tool.
  • Ability to create and work towards an overall brand design vision that meets and enhances business goals across the company.
  • Ability to consider long-term sustainability in all design decisions and maintain an eye for reusability in design.
  • You must be a world-class individual contributor first and foremost to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.

About Toptal

Toptal is one of the most innovative and rapidly expanding tech start-ups from Silicon Valley. With backing from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Adam D’Angelo, our platform is the fastest growing labor marketplace in the history of the Internet—connecting thousands of elite engineers all over the world. In the last four years, Toptal has become the #1 choice for tech companies requiring top-tier engineering talent and for the top 3% of freelancers looking for their next challenge.

Toptal has worked with over 2,000 clients (https://www.toptal.com/clients) to date. Toptal clients include Airbnb, J.P. Morgan, Zendesk, Artsy, IDEO, Pfizer, and many more.

The Toptal network includes thousands of designers and developers in over 100 countries. To be accepted into the network, all Toptal freelancers must pass a screening process (https://www.toptal.com/top-3-percent) that includes tests for English and communication skills and a variety of technical exams specific to the applicant's area of expertise, for example timed algorithm tests, live coding exercises, and test projects.

While we’re primarily focused on bringing quality and value to our clients, we’re also committed to creating a world-class environment for our employees. We are a completely distributed company with thousands of core and network team members located all over the world, and we take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun. We take an all-hands-on-deck approach to our work, taking pride in being collaborative, creative, and flexible.

If you aren’t looking for a job because you’re already killing it, we want you.