Senior Designer

We're Softway. We are an independent digital agency with offices in Houston, TX and Bengaluru, India. We do work we're proud of. Work that makes an impact on our clients' business and, hopefully, the world. We do it by bringing bright people together from all walks of life and every imaginable background, letting them loose on a challenge, and giving them the freedom to explore the possibilities.

WHO WE WANT:

We’re looking for a Senior Designer with at least 5 years of experience to join our team and lead a small group of Visual Designers. The following items should sound like you:

Client-ready
We put our Creative team in front of clients every day. As an AD here, you’ll be working closely with our clients, iterating and planning alongside them.

Mentor
Your team looks to you for advice and guidance. That means tactical design guidance, and it also means giving tough-love personal/professional advice when needed.

Creating for humans

You think about the end-user of your design and how you can make things simpler, better, and more enjoyable—no matter the size or scope of the project.

Proactive
You don't wait for others to tell you what to do—you figure things out on your own. You ask questions. You get clarity. You iterate and iterate. And if the team needs you, you’re willing to jump in and produce.

A well-calloused ego
Great work works. But to get to great work, you have to take a few punches in the creative gut once and a while. The bar is high here and we all help each other raise it every day.

Versatile
You are going to drive lots of different things for very different clients at Softway. You should get just as fired up about creating a logo as you do working a corporate website. We do it all

You’re an over-communicator
You recognize the importance of communication and take a proactive approach to communicating with team members.

WHO WE DON’T WANT:

We want to save your time and our time, so here are a few things we don’t want in a Senior Designer. If any of these things sound like you at all, please do not apply. Softway, unfortunately, is not the place for you.

• You are too good to work on an executive power point presentation or something not-so-creative. (We do a wide range of projects and they all can’t be super high level creative. We have fun no matter what we do and find joy in the process and the people around us).
• You are afraid to direct and lead writers in projects. (We wear a lot of hats here and our senior designers need the ability to mentor and lead every part of the creative team.)
• You are afraid of working directly clients and presenting to them. (Our clients see us as partners and enjoy working face-to-face with the creative team).
• You can’t handle change, a little chaos, sarcasm, or shade. (Things change here daily, no project is the same, and we love each other enough to throw as much shade as possible.)

If we choose to begin the interview process with you, we will be giving you a design assignment and we typically go through multiple rounds of interviews. (We have to get to know you and you have to get to know us—it has to be the right fit for everyone.)

Requirements

WHAT WE EXPECT OF YOU:

As a Senior Designer at Softway, we expect you to:

• Live and breathe the brands we work with—follow and extend their brand guidelines.
• Lead projects from start to finish.
• Experiment and iterate, a lot.
• Collaborate easily with Creative Directors, Graphic Designers, UX designers, Writers, other Senior Deisgners, Project Managers, Executives, and the Dev team.
• Be comfortable presenting work to clients.
• Communicate, a lot. If you see something isn’t right in a project, speak up.
• Listen, really listen, to your team and your clients.
• Own your projects and ask lots of questions.
• Be a wizard with design tools (Creative Cloud, Sketch).
• Be able to direct photography and video shoots
• Knowledge of UX and UX tools like Axure and InVision
• Love typography and not afraid to use color.
• Bring your passions, no matter how peculiar, to the agency.

• Understand the technology platforms we use every day.
• Do stuff besides art direction. You are the Senior Designer, but we can always use an extra brain or set of hands here and there for non-design type things.
• Work at client sites, following their internal standards and guidelines.

WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON:

Like a good, healthy, slightly crazy agency, we work across channels and media for our clients, so you’ll work on a bit of everything:

• Strategy

Our clients look to us for business consulting, internal communication planning, and digital transformation guidance. You will be a key part of this work.

• Digital

Fully integrated campaigns as well as standalone pieces like websites, emails, apps, digital signage, ads, etc.

• Branding

Branding elements like logos, typography, color palettes, patterns, and photography direction

• Print & editorial

Blog articles, whitepapers, case studies, and the occasional print piece.

Benefits

WHY SHOULD YOU WORK AT SOFTWAY

• A special place.

Softway is an agency that’s truly a special place to call home. It’s hard to explain. Just visit a few times and you’ll see.

• An ego-less workplace.

While there are egos here, none are too big for the organization. We’re ambitious, not pretentious. We all have each other’s backs.

• We are lovers of learning.

We push each other to do things differently, to learn a new skill, to share a success. We push you, but we won’t let you struggle.

• We take work and play very seriously.

In a perfect world, the lines between the two are blurred. We like to keep it light around here.

• Salary and benefits

You’ll get a competitive salary. Paid time off. Full benefits.