Senior Art Director

The Senior Art Director leads visual storytelling, brand expression, creative execution, and day-to-day creative operations across our family of brands. This role combines high-level visual leadership with hands-on production management, ensuring the Creative team delivers exceptional, on-brand work efficiently, on time, and against the company's highest business priorities.

The ideal candidate is both a strong creative leader and an exceptional operator: someone who can develop compelling visual concepts, lead and mentor a multidisciplinary creative team, and build the processes, schedules, and accountability needed to move a high volume of work from brief through final delivery.

About the Company:

Hudson Valley Lighting Group is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacturing, and omnichannel distribution of decorative and architectural lighting and home décor, encompassing seven brands: Hudson Valley Lighting, Mitzi, Troy, Corbett, CSL, Sonneman, and Schoolhouse. As a destination for thoughtfully designed lighting and home products, HVLG seeks to inspire and support our customers through a designer-forward approach to creating beautiful, considered spaces.

What You’ll Do:

Creative Direction & Execution

• Partner with Marketing and Product leadership to define and evolve creative direction across HVLG brands.
• Lead concept development and art direction for campaigns, product launches, photography/video shoots, digital storytelling, print, and other brand initiatives.
• Translate campaign briefs and business objectives into compelling, cohesive visual systems that can scale across channels.
• Ensure creative output aligns with each brand's unique aesthetic while maintaining a consistently high standard of quality.
• Stay current on visual trends, technologies, and creative approaches that keep HVLG's brands relevant and differentiated.

Creative Operations & Production Management

• Own the end-to-end creative workflow, from project intake and prioritization through resource planning, production, review, approval, and final delivery.
• Manage the Creative team's master project calendar, establishing realistic timelines and ensuring deadlines, dependencies, priorities, and deliverables are clearly communicated.
• Assign and balance workloads across graphic design, photography, video, 3D, retouching, print production, freelancers, and external resources based on priorities and available capacity.
• Lead regular creative status meetings and proactively identify bottlenecks, resource constraints, conflicting priorities, and risks.
• Establish and continuously improve workflows, intake procedures, templates, and project-management standards.
• Maintain visibility into team capacity and project status, providing Marketing leadership and partners with clear communication around workload, timelines, and resource needs.

Team Leadership & Creative Quality

• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary Creative team, including graphic designers, photographers, videographers, 3D artists, and freelancers.
• Provide clear direction, mentorship, constructive feedback, performance management, and professional development.
• Establish accountability for both creative quality and timely execution while fostering a positive, collaborative team culture.
• Review and approve creative deliverables for visual quality, accuracy, brand consistency, and readiness for final delivery.
• Maintain and evolve visual standards, templates, systems, and creative guidelines across HVLG brands.
• Identify skill and capacity gaps and recommend appropriate staffing, freelance, vendor, or process solutions.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Establish strong working rhythms with Marketing partners to ensure briefs, priorities, timelines, feedback, and approvals move efficiently between Marketing and Creative.
• Partner with Brand, Content, Digital, Product Development, Product Strategy, Merchandising, Sales, and other stakeholders to support product launches and business initiatives.
• Translate stakeholder needs into clear creative priorities while communicating timing, capacity, tradeoffs, and production requirements.
• Present creative concepts and recommendations to senior leadership and key stakeholders as needed.

Budget & Resource Management

• Partner with the Marketing Director to manage Creative budgets, freelance resources, agencies, vendors, and production expenses.
• Determine when work should be handled internally versus through external partners based on expertise, capacity, timing, and cost.
• Monitor resource utilization and support planning for future Creative staffing, technology, equipment, and production needs.
• Other duties assigned as needed.

Position Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in art direction, visual design, or creative leadership, with demonstrated responsibility for creative production, operations, or project delivery.
• Proven experience leading and developing multidisciplinary creative teams and managing high-volume workflows across multiple projects, brands, stakeholders, and deadlines.
• Experience with creative intake, prioritization, resource/capacity planning, production schedules, and workflow management.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating brand storytelling, campaign development, art direction, and visual systems thinking.
• Strong understanding of digital, print, photography, video, and e-commerce creative production.
• Expertise in Adobe Creative Suite and experience with project-management platforms; Asana experience preferred.
• Excellent leadership, communication, organizational, prioritization, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to balance creative excellence with operational discipline in a fast-paced, multi-brand environment.
• Home décor, lighting, interiors, lifestyle, or another design-led industry experience preferred.
• Ability to regularly commute to our Wappingers Falls, NY office 3–4 days per week.
• US citizen or permanent resident (no Visa sponsorship available).

WORKING CONDITIONS

Work Environment:

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those employees encounter while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

Ability to work in a Distribution Center environment with varying temperatures and noise.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

Hudson Valley Lighting is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, genetic factors, military/veteran status, or other characteristics protected by law.

Disclaimer: This position description indicates the general nature and level of work expected. It is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities required. Employees may be asked to perform other duties as needed.