Creative Director, Growth

About the role

Pelago is hiring a Creative Director, Growth to own the full creative arc of member acquisition from campaign concept through shipped execution. This role is responsible for defining what Pelago's growth surface looks, sounds, and feels like while holding yourself accountable for conversion outcomes. You will set the creative direction, evolve the voice, and build every asset yourself with a designer's craft. Reporting to the Head of Growth, this is a true player-coach position where design is your primary craft and campaign concepting elevates strategy. You will leverage AI tools actively in copy ideation, design iteration, and A/B variant production as part of daily workflow. This is a hybrid role requiring three days per week in the New York City office with a high-collaboration rhythm. The brief comes from data, and the creative strategy comes from you as you translate business goals into a coherent growth surface.

Key facts

What you'll do

Define the campaign concepting process end-to-end, from identifying the insight (why this message, for this person, at this moment) to translating it into a coherent campaign across email, direct mail, SMS, and the landing page.

Evolve Pelago's growth creative voice, including the visual language, messaging principles, and channel-specific standards that make acquisition surfaces coherent and differentiated.

Develop testable creative hypotheses, not merely "let's try a new email," but clear statements of insight, untested messaging, and reasoned conviction about conversion impact.

Own the messaging platform for every campaign, including the insight, the angle, and the hierarchy of claims across channels, while Senior Content Manager owns copy execution within that direction.

Act as the designer for emails, landing page modules, direct mail layouts, and campaign visuals, building these assets yourself to a high craft standard.

Work hands-on with AI tools across copy ideation, design iteration, and A/B variant production, integrating them actively into your workflow rather than treating them as aspirational.

Run creative experimentation as a discipline alongside Growth PM, Growth Ops, and Growth Engineer, ensuring every test starts with a defensible hypothesis and results in strategic creative learning.

Treat a flat conversion rate as a brief, not a verdict, generating hypotheses before being asked and testing them in order of conviction when performance is underperforming.

Lead across the organization by translating business goals and funnel data into creative strategy that non-creative stakeholders can understand, question, and trust.

Partner with Growth Marketing, Client Marketing, and Data teams to align messaging, audiences, and measurement while maintaining creative integrity.

Champion a culture of testing, learning, and rapid iteration by documenting creative decisions and outcomes for future reference.

Elevate Pelago's acquisition creative through continuous refinement of the system, raising the bar beyond inherited foundations.

Ensure every creative touchpoint reflects the clinically driven, human-centered approach that defines Pelago's brand and member experience.

Act as the strategic and operational owner of creative execution within the growth funnel, balancing autonomy with cross-functional collaboration.

Requirements

You must have a strong background in creative direction and growth-focused design, with demonstrable experience owning end-to-end campaign creative.

You must be comfortable making decisions with incomplete data and translating ambiguous business problems into coherent creative hypotheses.

You must have hands-on design skills, capable of producing high-quality emails, landing pages, and direct mail without relying solely on specialists.

You must have experience working directly with AI tools in copy and design workflows, using them to accelerate production and experimentation.

You must be able to present creative rationale to leadership without relying on aesthetic language, focusing on insight, strategy, and expected outcomes.

You must thrive in a hybrid environment, collaborating closely with cross-functional teams while maintaining creative ownership.

You must be comfortable managing multiple growth experiments in parallel and prioritizing based on conviction and potential impact.

You must have a track record of building creative systems that scale, rather than one-off campaigns, with an eye toward consistency and efficiency.

Nice to have

Experience in healthcare, substance use, or mental health contexts is preferred but not required.

Background in working with growth teams in technology or digital health environments.

Familiarity with privacy-sensitive environments and compliant creative practices.

Practical notes

This role requires three days per week in the New York City office.

Candidates must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship for this position.