Creative Lead (Remote) – Client-facing role

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At Ruby Digital, we’re always on the lookout for curious, digitally minded people. If you’re passionate about digital marketing and want a fast-paced, innovative agency career, join us. With our ever-evolving tech and your talent, we’ll deliver work that makes a real impact. Join the brightest, most curious minds across disciplines. Fifteen years in, and the journey’s just begun.

When you apply, please include the words, “I want to work for Ruby Group because …” in your cover letter and explain the exact reasons that you have. ANY APPLICANTS THAT DO NOT INCLUDE THIS WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED.

Correspondence will only be conducted with shortlisted candidates.

Should you not hear from us within 2 weeks, please consider your application unsuccessful.

About us

Ruby Digital is a multi-award-winning, 5-star rated digital marketing agency with one of South Africa’s strongest online profiles. We help ambitious brands grow revenue and market share through AI-enabled SEO – human expertise with AI to plan, create and optimise content for both classic search and generative engines (GEO) – alongside paid media and content.

With 15+ years’ experience across 15 countries and four continents, especially the UK, North America, EMEA and Australia, we’ve delivered results in competitive sectors including iGaming, e-commerce, online tourism and education.

As featured on: BusinessDayTV – NEWS24 – SABC – IOL – BIZ COMMUNITY

We focus on long-term value and ROI, supported by continuous R&D to keep clients ahead. Our specialists deliver clear communication, transparent reporting and measurable outcomes online.

Our Values

Solutions are us and,

We are better together,

We are lifelong learners,

We are practical optimists,

We are high achievers,

We are revolutionists.

About the role

As Creative Lead – you will be the a leadership appointment for Ruby Digital’s fast scaling Creative Division. You will report to the Head of Social and Creative and will be responsible for translating business and marketing objectives into high-quality creative concepts and multimedia executions, while leading the people, systems and operating capacity required to deliver them.

This is deliberately broader than a Senior Designer or Lead Designer position. The role operates across four dimensions simultaneously: creative leader, senior practitioner, people and operations manager, and AI and innovation leader. You will provide creative direction to senior and junior team members while remaining capable of developing key creative yourself when the work requires senior-level conceptual or executional input. You will own creative quality, resource and capacity planning, delivery coordination, client expectation management, team performance and the continuous development of the Creative function.

The role is intended to develop into Head of Creative once you have demonstrated stability in the organization and proven that you can lead the work, lead the team and build the function. That progression would coincide with the formalization of the Creative Division’s broader mandate for divisional strategy, organizational structure, capability planning, recruitment, innovation, standards, cross-functional integration and long-term growth.

Success in this role therefore means more than producing excellent creative work. It means increasing the creative capability of the organization: improving quality, developing people, creating scalable operating systems, using AI responsibly to expand production capacity and ensuring Creative can support Ruby Digital as the company grows globally.

Ruby Digital is a great place to work, with flexi-hours and the ability to do interesting work with varied clients.

Responsibilities

Creative Strategy & Concept Development

Develop a clear understanding of each client’s business model, brand, audience, market, objectives, campaign goals and constraints before defining the creative response.

Interpret business, brand and marketing objectives into creative strategies, campaign concepts, visual territories, key creative, mood boards, storyboards and channel-specific executions.

Move from business objective to audience insight, proposition, concept, creative idea and channel execution rather than treating the brief as a purely visual design request.

Interrogate, challenge and refine briefs where the proposed execution does not adequately solve the underlying business, brand or audience objective.

Originate integrated creative ideas that can translate coherently across multiple platforms, formats and stages of the customer journey.

Articulate and champion the strategic rationale behind creative decisions internally and to clients, linking creative choices to intended business and marketing outcomes.

Creative Direction & Multidisciplinary Execution

Lead creative direction from concept through final execution, ensuring work is strategically sound, visually distinctive, technically appropriate and consistently high quality.

Personally develop or contribute to key creative and high-priority concepts where senior-level creative craft or judgment is required.

Direct and critically review work across brand identity and visual systems, digital advertising, paid and organic social, display, web and landing-page design, UX/UI fundamentals, presentation design, illustration, typography, print, motion graphics, animation, photography, video concept development, storyboarding, production, editing and post-production.

Demonstrate mastery in several creative disciplines and strong creative literacy across the broader multimedia ecosystem; know what excellent work looks like even when a specialist executes the final craft.

Ensure creative is designed appropriately for the channel and format rather than simply resized or repurposed without consideration of platform behavior and audience context.

AI-Enabled Creative Production & Workflow Design

Use generative AI throughout appropriate stages of the creative process, including ideation, concept exploration, mood boarding, visual reference development, storyboarding, rapid prototyping, image generation, video generation, generative editing and production support.

Use AI intelligently for versioning, resizing, localization, format adaptation and scaled creative production while maintaining professional review and quality control.

Direct AI output through clear creative intent, structured prompting or instruction, critical evaluation and iterative refinement rather than accepting first-pass generated output.

Identify repeatable creative processes that can become AI-assisted workflows and translate successful experimentation into documented operating procedures.

Continuously improve the balance between speed, scalability, originality, craft, brand integrity and human judgment within AI-enabled production.

Maintain practical fluency in current-generation AI creative tools and adapt as the technology landscape evolves rather than being dependent on a single platform.

Creative Quality, Brand & AI Governance

Act as the quality gate for major creative work and define what constitutes client-ready output at Ruby Digital.

Establish and maintain creative standards, review procedures, QA checkpoints and approval stages across the team.

Conduct structured creative reviews and critiques, identify why work is not yet meeting the brief or quality standard, and direct the improvements required.

Protect client brand identity and consistency across campaigns, platforms and deliverables, including the development and use of reusable brand and design systems where appropriate.

Reduce recurring quality failures and unnecessary revision cycles b