Associate Director, Technical Motion Design

WHY DEPT®? We are a Growth Invention company built to help the world’s most ambitious brands grow faster. Operating at the intersection of technology and marketing, we create what is next by pioneering ideas, acting fast, and moving further because standing still just is not in our DNA. We are drawn to people who stay curious, move with intent, and never stop inventing. Our culture runs on three values: better together, relentlessly curious, and get sh*t done. It is how we work, how we grow, and how we make things that matter. At DEPT®, you will find the freedom to explore, the space to collaborate, and the trust to make a real impact for our clients, for each other, and for the world we are helping to build. THE ROLE: We are looking for an Associate Motion Technical Director to lead the technical evolution of the OpenAI motion pipeline while remaining an active motion practitioner. This mixed people management, operations, and individual-contributor role is responsible for building the systems that help the team move from brief to delivery with greater speed, consistency, and confidence. You will directly manage and mentor Motion Designers across the team, with a focus on technical craft, production judgment, workflow discipline, and problem solving. You will partner with Motion Directors, Creative Directors, designers, Project Managers, Quality Control, localization partners, and client stakeholders to translate creative goals into durable production systems. The role owns hands-on pipeline building across concept, build, approval, localization, delivery, and archive. You will create and maintain tools, scripts, templates, component libraries, file standards, review workflows, and automation that reduce repetitive work without narrowing creative possibilities.

You will also step into complex production work, debug failing builds, and help the team deliver when technical risk is highest. WHAT YOU’LL DO: - Define and maintain the technical roadmap for the OpenAI motion pipeline, prioritizing improvements that reduce repetitive work, improve quality, and make delivery more scalable. - Build, test, document, and maintain scripts, plugins, expressions, templates, presets, and AI-assisted tools for motion production, versioning, localization, quality control, and delivery. - Develop and govern reusable motion components, UI modules, project templates, and shared libraries so teams can reuse approved systems before rebuilding common behaviors. - Design localization-ready workflows, including responsive layouts, text expansion, structured copy handoffs, automated comp generation, version control, and first-language quality assurance. - Establish practical standards for file architecture, naming, layer organization, collected project files, dependencies, handoff, archiving, and long-term maintainability. - Improve the connections between Figma, After Effects, review platforms, trackers, storage, and delivery systems so feedback, versions, approvals, and source files remain traceable. - Remain hands-on in production by solving complex builds, prototyping technical approaches, debugging project failures, and creating reference implementations the team can extend. - Directly manage and develop Motion Designers, with responsibility for their growth, performance, daily engagement, and confidence in technical problem solving. - Coach Motion Designers across the team on efficient build practices, expressions, automation, localization, quality control, documentation, and sustainable project structure. - Partner with creative and project leadership during scoping and concept development to identify technical dependencies, production risk, reuse opportunities, and automation potential before work begins. - Evaluate new creative technologies and recommend when to adopt, test, or avoid them based on reliability, maintainability, security, creative value, and team readiness.