Director, Brand Experience

Zillow

3d•$219,500 - $369,000•Remote

About The Position

The most powerful expression of Zillow’s brand lives inside our product. We are looking for a Director of Brand Experience to shape that expression — bringing clarity to our visual language, elevating craft within product, and ensuring our brand scales with clarity, consistency, and craft. At Zillow, we believe our brand is our product. The experiences customers have in our apps and on our website are critical to their impression of our brand. This leader embeds brand expression into the core of how we design and build — shaping our visual language from the start, not at the end. As we accelerate product development through AI-enabled workflows, this role is critical to ensuring that increased speed does not erode quality. You will help define how visual standards are integrated into tooling and AI systems so that brand and craft remain foundational as the way we design and build evolves. Reporting to the Senior Director of Design Foundations, you will lead the evolution of our product visual language and our Visual Design practice, and partner closely with Design Systems, Content Design, Brand Strategy and our Marketing design studio to deliver cohesive, high-quality experiences at scale. You’ll lead a small, high-impact team of visual design specialists.

Requirements

A mission-driven design leader with a clear POV on how brand comes to life in digital products
Brings strong visual design craft and brand expertise with fluency in tech or product environments
Sweats the details from visual design to motion to iconography and illustration concepts
Able to translate vision into execution and ensure ideas are fully realized
Defines visual direction through their team and translates it into principles, standards, and systems that scale across tooling and AI-enabled workflows
Comfortable shaping direction early and proactively identifying opportunities, rather than engaging only at the end of the process
Committed to raising the bar across the design organization by up-leveling visual design capabilities, through education and upskilling
Intentional about how to structure and tailor partnerships with peers and their teams to maximize impact
Builds strong teams by giving clear feedback and creating environments where designers raise the bar together
Shapes clear, compelling narratives that bring senior leaders along and move work forward
Preferred background in graphic design, visual communication, or a related field
7+ years of experience leading and developing design teams; min 5 years of managing
10+ years of experience in visual, brand, or digital design, including experience defining visual language within digital product experiences
Experience working within technology or product-led organizations and partnering closely with product and engineering teams
Experience shipping digital products and bringing design work from concept through execution
Experience working across complex, cross-functional environments and aligning a broad set of stakeholders to move work forward
Experience translating visual standards into scalable systems, tooling, or workflows
Portfolio demonstrating how you lead teams and shape work, with examples that reflect strong craft and execution

Nice To Haves

experience in teaching, mentoring, or other forms of practice leadership

Responsibilities

Shape and evolve Zillow’s product visual language
Define and evolve the visual language and brand experience principles across Zillow’s digital products
Ensure our brand personality is expressed consistently and cohesively in product experiences
Engage early in product strategy and planning to embed brand thinking from the start
Identify opportunities — both transformative and incremental — to elevate craft across the ecosystem
Raise the standard for visual craft
Mature our visual design practice and elevate skills within our product design org
Establish clear standards and guidance for visual execution within product
Integrate visual standards and principles into design systems, engineering workflows, AI-enabled tooling, and our new brand hub
Show what great looks like through rituals and resources
Safeguard quality and cohesion as we increase speed and scale
Lead and develop a high-performing team
Inspire, coach, and grow a team of visual designers across identity, motion, and illustration
Provide strong creative direction and thoughtful feedback
Build a culture of excellence, accountability, and collaboration
Partner and influence across the organization
Partner closely with Brand on strategy, priorities and execution
Collaborate closely with Design Systems to embed brand into shared components and tooling
Partner with Content Design to align visual and verbal expression
Partner with Studio Z to ensure cohesive brand experiences across marketing & product
Work closely with experience design leaders to support their teams and work
Influence senior stakeholders through strong storytelling and sound judgment