Design Leadership Jobs in Washington, United States of America
Find your next Design Leadership role at companies that value creative talent
Showing 6 jobs
Design Manager
🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Ava Energy 🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Lead multi-discipline design coordination and master scheduling for hyperscale GPU data center builds. Establish program governance, including gates, change control, and standard playbooks to streamline engineering delivery.
Senior Design Manager, Events
🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Mcdermott Will & Schulte 🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
The Senior Design Manager, Events is responsible for envisioning and delivering world-class event experiences, ensuring a cohesive and elevated brand presence. This role involves overseeing the creative vision from concept to execution, managing timelines, and collaborating with internal and external stakeholders.
Head of Design and Research
🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Upside 🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Own the quality, consistency, and polish bar across the consumer and payments experience. Lead a small team of designers and researchers to enhance design integration into product discovery and drive measurable outcomes.
Head of Design and Research
🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Upside 🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Lead a small team of designers and researchers to elevate the quality, consistency, and polish of the consumer and payments experience. Partner with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to integrate design into early discovery and scale the research practice using AI-native approaches.
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Project Design Manager
🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Cushman & Wakefield 🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
The Project Design Manager will lead the design and project management process for Nontraditional restaurant environments, ensuring solutions reflect brand standards while adapting to unique constraints. They will manage the project team, serve as the primary design liaison, and evaluate existing conditions to provide creative design solutions.
Project Design Manager
🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Cushman & Wakefield 🇺🇸 Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Lead the design and project management process for non-traditional restaurant environments, ensuring brand standards are met across various atypical sites. Act as the primary liaison between architecture, kitchen design, and construction teams to translate operational needs into technical design solutions.
About Design Leadership careers
Design leaders in 2026 set the strategic vision for design organizations navigating an AI-saturated market. This role requires a balance of craft expertise and high-level business acumen to advocate for design's value at the executive level.
Effective leaders foster a culture of technical agency, establishing systems that allow human creativity and machine efficiency to coexist.
Companies like Stripe and Airbnb seek VPs and Directors of Design who can scale teams and align design strategy with long-term business objectives.
We feature senior leadership positions including Design Directors, Heads of Design, VP of Design, Chief Design Officers, and design team leads at companies like Meta, Google, Airbnb, Stripe, and fast-growing AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. These roles span product design, brand, and cross-functional design organizations.
Many companies offer remote design leadership roles, including distributed-first companies like Notion, Linear, GitLab, and Vercel. AI companies like Midjourney and Anthropic also hire remote design leaders. Some companies prefer hybrid arrangements for VP+ positions.
Most positions require 8–15+ years of design experience with 3–5+ years managing teams. Strong candidates demonstrate strategic thinking, team building, stakeholder management, and a track record of shipping successful products at companies like Figma, Spotify, Netflix, or emerging AI startups. Browse leadership portfolios to see how experienced designers showcase their impact.
Design leadership salaries are highly competitive: Design Directors earn $160k–$240k, VPs of Design $220k–$350k+, and CDOs at major companies can exceed $400k with significant equity packages. AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks often offer premium total compensation. Consult our salary guide for detailed breakdowns.